Hundreds killed in frigid Mediterranean Sea while fleeing Libya in rubber boats
ROME — Survivors of another deadly Mediterranean crossing reported Wednesday that some 300 migrants were unaccounted-for in the frigid open seas, as the UN refugee agency and other aid groups sharply criticized the new EU rescue operation as inefficient for saving lives.
The suspected deaths add to the 29 reported earlier in the week by the Italian coast guard, which said the victims had died of hypothermia during the voyage that began Sunday in Libya, where most smuggling operations originate.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said survivors reported that four boats had left together Sunday from Libya and that 107 people had survived. After initially confirming 203 deaths from three boats, it confirmed the fourth and raised the toll to around 300.
The agency’s spokeswoman in Italy, Carlotta Sami, said the victims had been “swallowed up by the waves,” the youngest a child of 12.
UNHCR, Save the Children and other aid groups blasted the new EU-backed rescue patrol as ineffective. The European Union took over Mediterranean patrols after Italy phased out its robust Mare Nostrum operation in November. It had been launched in 2013 after 360 migrants died off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
But the EU’s Triton mission only operates a few miles off Europe’s coast — its job is to patrol Europe’s borders — whereas Mare Nostrum patrols took Italian rescue ships up close to Libya’s coast.
“The Triton operation doesn’t have as its principal mandate saving human lives, and thus cannot be the response that is urgently needed,” Laurens Jolles, the head of the UN agency for southern Europe, said in a statement.
Save The Children called for the EU to urgently meet to restart Mare Nostrum “or another rescue system that has the mandate, the capacity and means to prevent other tragedies.”
Coastguard speedboats picked up 105 migrants in the Mediterranean overnight, seven of whom were already dead, from a converted fishing boat battered by high winds and waves that hit eight metres. GUARDIA COSTIERA
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