Over 700 migrants are feared dead in three Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks in the south of Italy, the UN refugee agency has said. This is the largest loss of life reported in the Mediterranean since April 2015.
Migrants were desperately trying to reach Europe in unseaworthy smuggling boats. Carolotta Sami, spokesperson for UNHCR said and estimated 100 people are missing from a boat that capsized off the coast of Libya on Wednesday and about 550 of them on Thursday morning.
Refugees who saw that boat sink told her agency it was carrying about 670 people, didn’t have an engine and was being towed by another packed smuggling boat before it capsized. She said about 25 people from the capsized boat managed to reach the first boat and survive, 79 others were rescued by international patrol boats and 15 bodies were recovered.
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Italian police said survivors identified the commander of the boat with the working engine as a 28-year-old Sudanese man, who has been arrested.
In a third shipwreck on Friday, Sami said 135 people were rescued, 45 bodies were recovered and an unknown numbers of migrants were still missing.
Warmer waters and calmer weather of late have only increased the migrants’ attempts to reach Europe. Last week, over 4,000 migrants were rescued at sea in one day alone by an Italian-led naval operation.
(This post has been edited for length.)
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