The Deadly Migration Sea Routes in Mediterranean, 400 Died
With Italian authorities rescuing 8,500 migrants in the Mediterranean over the weekend and reports up to 400 may have died, there can be no doubt that an unprecedented summer surge in migrant sea crossings is already under way, say Italian media.
AP reports that the feared drowning of 400 migrants in a shipwreck this week in the Mediterranean Sea — one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade — raised alarms Wednesday amid an unprecedented wave of migration toward Europe from Africa and the Middle East.
The deaths are believed to have occurred during a shipwreck 24 hours after leaving Libya, which is plagued by violence and civil war, in an attempt to reach Italy.
The boat was carrying about 550 migrants in total, according to some of the 150 survivors who were rescued and brought to a southern Italian port on Tuesday morning, Save the Children reported.
Before this incident there had already been more than 500 deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa this year, up sharply from 47 in the same period of 2014, said the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The Mediterranean "has emerged as the most dangerous" of four major sea routes used by the world's refugees and migrants, taken by 219,000 people last year, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.
Fleeing poverty, war or other violence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, migrants have died by the thousands in the Mediterranean over the years while trying to reach Europe.
The precise figure is unknown: Authorities only count the bodies found in the sea, on shore, or on board boats where migrants can die of thirst or exposure. Up to 20,000 people have made the perilous crossing to Italy since the start of the year, similar to the same period in 2014, a year when a record 170,000 reached the country's shores.
Rights groups lashed out at the EU on Wednesday for scrapping rescue operations in the Mediterranean, saying it had endangered the lives of thousands of desperate migrants making perilous journeys across the sea, as per a report in AFP.
"European governments' ongoing negligence towards the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean has contributed to a more than 50-fold increase in migrant and refugee deaths since the beginning of 2015," Amnesty International said.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that Europe should do more to end the wars that led people to embark on the world's most deadly smuggling route.
A number of NGOs said this afternoon they were deeply saddened by the news of the death of some 400 migrants in an attempt to reach Italy from Libya.
They called on the European Union and member states to prevent such incidents by doing their utmost to secure safe and legal access to Europe. The NGOs were: Aditus Foundation, African Media Association, Foundation for Shelter and Support of Migrants, Integra Foundation, International Association for Refugees, Jesuit Refugee Service, KOPIN, Malta Emigrants' Commission, Migrants' Network for Equality, Organisation for Friendship in Diversity, Pace Lab, People for Change Foundation and SOS Malta.
The U.N. refugee agency expressed shock at the scale of the deaths in Monday's capsizing and renewed calls on European governments to redouble search and rescue efforts, while the International Organization for Migration maintained that the situation had reached "crisis proportions."
