An Italian patrol ship arrived in Malta on Monday with 24 corpses recovered out of hundreds feared drowned after a migrant boat capsized in the Mediterranean, in one of the worst disasters yet in a growing humanitarian crisis.
The death toll from Sunday's shipwreck off the coast of Libya was uncertain after officials said there had been at least 700 people on board, some reportedly locked in the hold.
Italian media said a Bangladeshi survivor brought by helicopter to hospital in Sicily told police there had been 950 passengers on the boat, which sank when people on board rushed to one side to attract attention from a passing merchant ship.
A toll of that magnitude would push to over 1,500 the number of people who have died so far this year packed into rickety boats by human traffickers to cross the Mediterranean in a bid to reach a better life in Europe.
Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on Monday the United Nations should mandate a force to intervene directly in Libya to disrupt or attack the traffickers and stop the boats from setting off.
The Italian coast guard said on Monday 28 people had been saved from where the ship sank, 70 miles (110 km) off the coast of Libya. The survivors are on the same boat as the victims and will be brought to Italy later in the day.
Lawlessness in Libya, where two rival governments are fighting for control, has made it almost impossible to police the criminal gangs who can charge thousands of dollars to bring mainly sub-Saharan Africans to Europe.
"I believe that the (European) focus should be what should be done in Libya to stop the boats," Maltese premier Muscat said. "Unless something is done about Libya, these scenes will be repeating themselves."
Before Sunday's disaster, the International Organisation for Migration estimated around 20,000 migrants had reached the Italian coast this year, and 900 had died.
Italy closed dedicated maritime search and rescue mission "Mare Nostrum" late last year, making way for a Europe-wide border control operation called "Triton" which has been criticised for having a much smaller budget and narrower remit.
EU foreign ministers will discuss the immigration crisis at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. Muscat will be in Rome on Monday to meet with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, followed by a news conference.
Distress calls from another migrant boat reported
A sinking boat, thought to be carrying more than 300 people across the Mediterranean Sea, is sending out distress signals, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is reporting.
News of the latest incident at sea comes after more than 700 people were feared to have drowned on Saturday when an overcrowded boat capsized off Libya. Survivors have since said that some 900 people could have been on the vessel. This included between 40 to 50 children and 200 women, survivors told Italian media.
On Monday, the IOM chief William Lacy Swing called for the immediate restoration of Mare Nostrum, an Italian navy search-and-rescue operation which was stopped last year due to operating costs and political pressure to curb the flow of migration via the perilous Mediterranean crossing from war-torn Libya.
Swing also urged other European countries to support the operation.
EU ministers headed on Monday into crisis talks to discuss what a UN refugee agency UNHCR spokeswoman called "the worst massacre ever seen in the Mediterranean".
Carlotta Sami, the UNHCR spokeswoman, said survivors' testimonies suggested there had been around 700 people on board the 20-metre (70-foot) fishing boat when it keeled over in darkness overnight.
But a Bangladeshi survivor, who was taken to hospital by helicopter in Sicily,put the numbers on board at 950, and said 200 women and nearly 50 children had been among them, according to prosecutors in the Italian city of Catania.
Only 28 people are thought to have survived the wreck, Italian coastguard officials said.
The latest disaster comes after a week in which two other migrant shipwrecks left an estimated 450 people dead, with increasing boatloads coming from Libya as the North African country falls deeper into chaos.
"Get Mare Nostrum back out there, give it the support it needs to save these lives," IOM's Swing told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. "Mare Nostrum saved 200,000 lives between October 2013 and December 2014." He said that Triton, a much smaller EU-run operation that replaced the Italian one, was "not adequate".
"They don't have a mandate, they're a border protection agency, not a life-saving agency," he said, adding that Triton was not patrolling in the deep waters of the Mediterranean and did not have sufficient equipment.
Italy scaled back Mare Nostrum after failing to persuade its European partners to help meet its operating costs of $9.7 million a month amid divisions over whether the mission was unintentionally encouraging migrants to attempt the crossing.
However, Swing dismissed the claims and urged European countries to support the programme.
"There are 27 other members of the European Union, surely we can share responsibility for this and it would not cost anybody too much," he said. Monday 20 April 2015
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/20/uk-europe-migrants-italy-idUKKBN0NB0OQ20150420
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/migration-agency-urges-restoration-rescue-operation-after-shipwreck-2041488188
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