Migrant boat from Egypt ‘deliberately sunk’, killing 500

About 500 migrants drowned after the boat carrying them from Egypt to Malta was apparently deliberately sunk by people-traffickers, an international migrants' group has said.

News of the sinking, which happened on September 6th, emerged on the same day up to 200 people were feared to have died when another boat heading to Europe capsized off Libya. The two sinkings bring the estimated number of migrants drowned in Mediterranean waters so far this year to 2,900, compared with 700 during the whole of last year.

Reports of the apparent deliberate sinking were passed to investigators from the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which interviewed two young Palestinian men who survived the wreck. The pair were among only nine confirmed survivors from a boat packed with an estimated 500 people.

Separate boat

Leonard Doyle, an IOM spokesman, said the men recounted having boarded the people-smuggling vessel in Damietta, Egypt, on September 6th. Midway through the voyage the traffickers, who appeared to be travelling in a separate boat, ordered the migrants to switch to a less seaworthy vessel, which they refused to do. Enraged, the smugglers rammed the first boat, sinking it, the survivors said.

One of the Palestinian men clung on to a lifebuoy for a day and a half, initially with six other passengers. The other six all died before the man was rescued by a passing ship and brought to Sicily.

Earlier on Monday, the Libyan navy said a migrant boat carrying approximately 250 people capsized off the coast near Tripoli. While 36 people were confirmed rescued, the others were feared dead. A navy spokesman, Ayub Qassem, told Reuters the boat had sunk near Tajoura, east of the capital, Tripoli. He said: “There are so many dead bodies floating in the sea.”

Huge numbers of people are attempting to flee from Africa to Europe, with numbers sharply up this year, in part due to the continued violent chaos in Libya and Syria.

Dangerous crossings

According Frontex, the agency that monitors the EU’s external borders, more migrants are likely to risk the dangerous crossings this year than at the height of the Arab Spring. By mid-August this year there had already been almost as many illegal border crossings counted as there were in the whole of 2011, when the number reached 140,000, the agency said.

According to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, nearly 110,000 people have been rescued making sea crossings this year, with almost 1,900 confirmed as having died in the attempt.

Prior to the latest two incidents, the IOM estimated that so far this year 2,200 people had died trying to cross the Mediterranean, compared to 700 in all of 2013. – (Guardian service)