Hundreds feared dead in migrant shipwreck off Libya

Tobruk, (IINA) - Hundreds of people are feared to have drowned in the southern Mediterranean last week, in what would be the deadliest migrant shipwreck in months, news agencies reported Wednesday.
A repurposed fishing boat overloaded by smugglers with up to 500 Africans hoping to reach Italy from eastern Libya sunk as passengers from smaller boats were trying to board it, survivors told the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The survivors’ accounts described panicked passengers desperately trying to stay afloat by jumping between vessels.
A death toll of just half the size would bring the total number of mortalities in the Mediterranean in 2016 to over 1,000 – more than a quarter of last year’s record.
The IOM said its staff met on Tuesday with survivors of the incident who were rescued on Saturday by a Filipino cargo ship off the Libyan coast. The group said some 200 migrants left the Libyan coastal city of Tobruk on several small boats, each carrying between 30 to 40 people and bound for a larger vessel on the high seas.
IOM said the larger vessel, which was already desperately overcrowded with about 300 people, “began taking on water” when the newcomers got on. As the larger vessel began to sink, “panicking passengers tried to jump into the smaller boats they had arrived in”.
The 41 survivors included those who had yet to be transferred from the small vessel, as well as a number of those who swam back to the smaller boat after the larger one began to sink.
The survivors “claim to have been part of, and to have witnessed, a large shipwreck that took place in the Mediterranean Sea claiming the lives of approximately 500 people”, UNHCR said.
After the shipwreck, they were left to drift in the smaller boat, until they were spotted and rescued by a merchant ship on 16 April and taken to the Greek mainland.
The survivors’ testimonies clarify a situation that was the subject of conflicting rumors for several days. Previous versions had variously claimed that the boat left from Egypt, or that survivors had been taken to Italy or to a Greek island.
AG/IINA

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