The Mediterranean boat people crisis may have touched its blackest moment yet with reports more than 700 people are feared to have drowned when their boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
A vast rescue operation, involving helicopters, navy, Coast Guard and merchant ships is currently ongoing in the hope that some of the migrants have been able to survive in the relatively warm Mediterranean waters some 70km offshore.
A complete picture of how the latest tragedy unfolded has not yet emerged. However, the earliest reports from survivors suggest that the 20 metre long migrant boat was overloaded, with more than 700 people on board.
Rescued migrants after they disembark at Corigliano harbour, Italy, this week. Since April 10th alone, the Italian coast guard has rescued about 8,500 people.Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the boat got into difficulties south of the Italian island of Lampedusa with some of the migrants managing to alert the Italian coast guard.
A Portuguese merchant ship, the King Jacob, which was the ship nearest to the stricken boat’s position, was alerted by the Coast Guard.
It is believed that when the King Jacob arrived at the migrant boat, many of the boat people moved to one side of the craft, causing it to overturn and sink with a heavy loss of life. Only 28 people were confirmed to have been rescued.
Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agnecy, UNHCR, told Sky Italia it was not the first time that a boat people drowning tragedy had been caused by this precise dynamic.
She said the huge loss of life proved one more time how the current control of the Mediterranean carried out by the EU Frontex border agency is totally inadequate, saying that an EU operation similar to Italy’s disbanded “Mare Nostrum” search and resuce service is urgently required.
If confirmed, the disaster would be one of the worst seen during the decades-long migrant crisis in the southern Mediterranean and would bring the total number of dead since the beginning of the year to more than 1,500.
Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has called an emergency cabinet meeting in Rome for this afternoon to assess the problem while French president Francois Hollande has called for an emergency meeting of EU Foreign and Interior Ministers.
Pope Francis, in his Sunday Angelus homily in St Peter’s Square, called for prayers for the victims.
“In sorrow, I call on the international community to act decisively and quickly in order to avoid similar such tragedies…These (boat) people are men and women like us, our brothers and sisters, hungry, persecuted, wounded, exploited, in search of a better life, in search of happiness,” he told the faithful. “I invite you to pray in silence for all these brothers and sisters.”
With the arrival of milder spring weather, the boat people crisis has been gathering pace, with more than 12,000 people landing on Italy’s southern coasts in the last 10 days.
Nearly all of these clandestine crossings begin in Libya where human traffickers seem able to operate with complete freedom of movement.
Following the toppling of former leader Muammar Gadafy in 2011, the lawlessness in Libya has left criminal gangs of migrant smugglers a free hand to send a stream of boats carrying desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East
In a statement, Amnesty International said the latest capsizing “is a man-made tragedy that could well have been avoided”.
“What we are witnessing in the Mediterranean is a man-made tragedy of appalling proportions. These latest deaths at sea come as a shock, but not a surprise,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia. “Whilst merchant vessels and their crews have bravely attempted to fill the gap left by the chronic shortfall in specialist search and rescue teams, they are not designed, equipped or trained for maritime rescue.
“It is time for European governments to face their responsibilities and urgently set up a multi-country concerted humanitarian operation to save lives at sea.”
More than 400 people lost their lives in a boat people sinking, again off the Libyan coast, eight days ago.
At a meeting in the White House with US president Barak Obama on Friday, Mr Renzi warned that the Mediterranean “has become a cemetry”.
Mr Renzi said Italy was ready to assume “politcal leadership” in diplomatic negotiations with Libya in an attempt to block the increasing human trafficking, expressing the hope that the “total agreement” between the USA and Italy relative to migration would produce positive results in the coming weeks.
