The boat’s only known survivor, Mohamed Gomaa Abdel-Kader, 23, told authorities that 40 people were on the boat when it sank. They were traveling overnight Sunday from an Egyptian port near Libya. They were part of a three-boat convoy full of migrants heading to Europe illegally, he said, according to a statement from Egypt’s Foreign Ministry.
The growing crisis from the flood of refugees could prompt Turkey to ask the United Nations to create a haven in Syria.
The boat he was on was supposed to carry no more than 15 people. It started sinking from the weight of the passengers, and people began jumping into the sea in the middle of the night, he said.
The search for survivors was continuing in the Burdi area, the officials in Cairo said.
In Libya, the state news agency Lana reported that the boat was carrying around 40 illegal migrants and capsized off Libya's east coast near the border with Egypt, with only one passenger surviving the tragedy.
"All the migrants who were on board died, except for one person who survived and was able to alert local authorities and inform them of the tragedy," Lana said, quoting a local official.
It was not immediately clear who the passengers of the boat were but they are widely believed to be asylum seekers trying to get to Europe in search of jobs and a better life.
Lana did not give the nationalities of the passengers but said the boat sunk some three kilometres (almost two miles) off the Libya coast.
Libya has been traditionally a launchpad for African refugees and migrants seeking to make an illegal run across the sea to Europe, with many landing in Italy. Migrants and refugees often travel in rickety and overcrowded wooden fishing boats and there have been several accidents at sea.
Thousands of young North African men make the dangerous and illegal sea journey to Europe to flee poverty, high unemployment and low wages at home. Some leave from Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, but most travel overland to neighboring Libya to take the shorter trip from there.
In April last year, scores of people went missing at sea after a tiny boat carrying more than 200 African migrants fleeing unrest-hit Libya capsized in the night in three-metre-high waves.
In March 2010, around 18 Egyptians drowned at sea trying to flee illegally to Europe. In 2007, 22 people died when two smuggler boats carrying around 150 Egyptians capsized off Italy’s southern coast. The next month, another boat sank off Turkey, killing 50, half of them Egyptians.
Tuesday 28 August 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/officials-36-egyptians-missing-3-dead-after-boat-sinks-trying-to-reach-europe-illegally/2012/08/27/9ec26664-f055-11e1-b74c-84ed55e0300b_story.html
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