TRIPOLI: Rescueworkers said yesterday they had plucked the bodies of 62 migrants from watersoff the Libyan coast a day after one of the deadliest shipwrecks in theMediterranean this year. About 145 migrants were rescued by the Libyancoastguard Thursday after their overloaded boat went down east of the capitalnear the port city of Khoms.
Aid agenciesinitially feared that scores of migrants had drowned, with the number ofmissing estimated at more than 110 by the International Organization forMigration (OIM), and fishermen reported the waters were full of floatingbodies. "Our Red Crescent teams have pulled 62 migrants" from thewater since Thursday evening, the head of Libya's Red Crescent rescue unit AbdelmoneimAbu Sbeih said on Friday.
"The bodiesare still floating onto the shore continuously, it's not possible to give atotal number," he added. Survivors reported there were some 400 peopleaboard when it went down, according to global charity Doctors Without Borders(MSF). One of the fishermen who was the first on the scene to save thesurvivors recounted finding "bodies floating on the surface of the waterwhere the boat went down". The head of the UN refugee agency FilippoGrandi called the wreck "the worst Mediterranean tragedy of thisyear".
Libyan navyspokesman General Ayoub Kacem said most of the rescued migrants were fromEritrea, although Palestinians and Sudanese were also among the group waitingto be taken on to reception centers. A member of the Libyan coast guard saidthe outfit did not "have the means" to launch a high seas search andwould "have to wait for the sea to return the bodies so we can pick themup". Local authorities were gathering and storing bodies of the victimsbut were facing numerous problems and struggling to find burial places forthem, according to municipal source in Khoms.
'Traumatized'
UN chief AntonioGuterres said he was "horrified" by the latest tragedy at sea."We need safe, legal routes for migrants and refugees. Every migrantsearching for a better life deserves safety and dignity," he tweeted. Themigrants had been apparently headed out to sea on three boats lashed together,MSF mission chief Julien Raickman told AFP by telephone on Thursday.
One of thesurvivors, Abdallah Osman, recounted how their boat started taking on waterabout 90 minutes after setting out to sea hoping to reach Europe. "TheEgyptian captain decided to turn back," he said. Osman, a 28-year-oldEritrean, said a passing ship saw that their boat was in distress but took noaction. MSF nurse Anne-Cecilia Kjaer met with survivors, including some who had"swallowed a lot of sea water and had respiratory" problems."Many children could not swim, and even those who knew how to succumbed toexhaustion," she said.
Kjaer said themigrants were already "traumatized" from dangerous journeys acrossdeserts where they were "captured by traffickers, subjected to violenceand torture, and (then) saw their loved ones die at sea". The capsize came only a few weeks after some68 migrants died when an Italy-bound boat sank off Tunisia. Before the latestshipwreck, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the OIM said426 migrants had perished in the Mediterranean this year.
AmnestyInternational lambasted the European Union over the latest deaths. "Thishigh number represents a new low for European leaders. They have doneeverything they can to pull up the drawbridge to Europe," it said,"yet people are still risking their lives to come to Europe". Libya,which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed presidentMuammar Gaddafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especiallyfrom sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe. - AFP