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Sunday 19 Apr 2015 - 13:22 Makkah mean time-30-6-1436  Tripoli (IINA) – Seven hundred people are feared dead after a fishing boat packed with migrants trying to reach Europe capsized off Malta, the UNHCR said Sunday.
Spokeswoman Carlotta Sami told the Skytg24 news channel that only 28 people had survived the shipwreck. The survivors indicated there had been more than 700 on board, she said. The boat capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, 120 miles south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, the Times of Malta reported. The emergency was declared at about midnight. The boat is believed to have capsized when migrants moved to one side of the vessel when a merchant ship approached. If confirmed, the tragedy would be by far the biggest in a growing catalog of mass drownings of migrants attempting to reach the European Union on overcrowded, unseaworthy boats run by people smugglers.
The disaster comes after a week in which two other shipwrecks left an estimated 450 people dead. More than 11,000 other would-be immigrants to Europe have been rescued by Italy's coastguard and other boats. Some 1,500 migrants have now drowned in the waters between Libya and Italy since the start of the year. Aid organizations have called for a concerted international effort to put better search-and-rescue systems in place and for action to stem the unprecedented numbers of asylum seekers and migrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa seeking to reach Europe.
HA/IINA
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