Human traffickers ram refugees’ boat 500 dead
20 Sep The scotsman
As many as 500 migrants crossing the Mediterranean to start new lives
in Europe have drowned after their boat was rammed by human traffickers,
it was reported .The disaster was just one of five fatal sinkings in the
Mediterranean over the weekend, as Palestinians and Iraqis join the flow
of Syrians and Africans escaping conflict and oppression. The most
dramatic sinking occurred on Saturday off the coast of Malta when 500
Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptian and Sud-anese migrants were allegedly
ordered by traffickers to switch to a smaller boat after sailing from
the port of Damietta in Egypt.
The group refused, fearing the boat was too small, prompting the
traffickers who were on a separate boat to ram their vessel, causing it
to sink.The story was recounted by two Palestinians picked up by a
freighter who were among the 11 survivors found floating in the sea.“If
this story, which police are investigating, is true, it would be the
worst shipwreck in years… not an accident but a mass murder, perpetrated
by criminals without scruples or any respect for human life,” the
International Organisation for Migration said in a statement.A
spokeswoman for the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) said
that other survivors said the vessel may have been carrying between 300
and 500 passengers.The UNHCR said four other vessels had also sunk at
the weekend one sailing from Egypt and three from Libya bringing the
total drowned or missing to between 550 and 750.One of the vessels
sailing from Libya had 250 passengers on board, with just 36 survivors
found, said Libyan coastguard spokesman Qassim Ayoub.
“There were a lot of floating bodies but a lack of resources meant we
could not fish out the corpses, especially as it was ?starting to get
dark. Our priority was to rescue the survivors,” he said.Around 120,000
migrants have made the crossing to Italy this year more than double the
60,000 who arrived last year but 2,500 have drowned trying, including 30
who died of fuel fumes when they were packed into the hold of a vessel
in June.
Italy’s deputy foreign minister, Lapo Pistelli, described this
weekend’s sinkings as “the ?umpteenth daily massacre, a tragedy that
knows no end”.Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Rome, said
that Iraqis and Palestinians fleeing Gaza were adding to the migrant
flow, but added that a key cause of recent deaths was the chaos caused
by militia fighting in Libya, a normal departure point for migrants, who
pay around £600 for the crossing.
“More Syrians are trying to leave from Egypt instead, which is a
longer and more dangerous crossing, and they are being forced to switch
boats mid-journey, sometimes five or six times, possibly as they are
handed over between different groups of traffickers,” she said.
Of the 1,000 migrants arriving in Italy daily, Syrians make up about
20 per cent, but Eritreans are the largest group, at some 25 per
cent.The Italian navy has been using ships, drones and even submarines
to help spot and pick up migrants at sea since last October, when 366
migrants drowned in an incident off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
This weekend alone, the navy said it had picked up 2,380 ?migrants at
sea. The operation has been criticised for encouraging migrants to risk
the crossing, and Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano has said
navy vessels will stop venturing out so far into the Mediterranean to
search for migrant ships.
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