Dramatic photos of a separate near disaster emerge as dozens panicked migrants plummet into the Med during their rescue.
The migrants, believed to be from west Africa, had set off from Libya early on Wednesday morning.
A woman wrapped in a survival foil blanket aboard a ship during a rescue operation for migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean on Nov. 3, 2016.
More than 240 migrants are believed to have drowned in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday, adding to the toll in what was already the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea.
Survivor accounts suggest that two crowded boats broke up just off the coast of Libya on Wednesday, U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said. The 31 survivors were taken early Thursday to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a rescue hub amid an ever-deadlier crisis as migrants depart Africa’s northern shores in a bid to make it to Europe.
The reports from the survivors could not be independently confirmed, but it is common for migrant ships to be filled far beyond capacity, and hundreds have perished in past sinkings. If true, the latest shipwrecks bring the toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean to 4,220 this year, the highest on record, Sami said.
Desperate migrants cling onto the side of a boat during their rescue, while two other migrant ships sank killing around 240 people
“This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said.
According to Sami, the 29 survivors of the first wreck said their boat capsized after wooden planks at the bottom of their rubber dinghy broke apart several hours after departing Libya around 3 a.m. Wednesday. Pregnant women and at least six children were on board, survivors told the U.N. refugee agency, but no children were saved in the rescue, which took place about 25 miles off Libya’s coast. One woman lost her 2-month-old baby, Sami said, and 12 bodies were recovered.
Migrants have been making their way from Libya to Italy on rubber dinghies such as this one
The survivors said they were in the Mediterranean’s cold waters for hours before being rescued around 3 p.m. Wednesday. The survivors said more than 140 people were aboard the first vessel.
Two survivors of a second shipwreck were rescued in a separate operation, Sami said. They said at least 120 had been on board their boat, which had problems immediately upon setting out and also broke apart off the Libyan coast around 5 a.m. Wednesday.
The remaining people on the boats are believed to have drowned, Sami said. No further rescue operations are being performed at the location of Wednesday’s shipwrecks.
Migrants were taken back to the Maltese vessel
Most of the migrants appear to have come from sub-Saharan Africa, Sami said, but she said the details were still being checked. She did not immediately know which agency had carried out the rescue.
The European Union is conducting a search-and-rescue operation in the Western Mediterranean that is temporarily being offered logistical assistance from the NATO military alliance.
Migrant traffic across the Mediterranean has changed significantly in the last year, after more than 1 million people made the passage in 2015. Most of them came via Turkey to Greece and then pressed onward into Europe. The sea portion of that journey was shorter and safer than the perilous passage from Libya to Italy. But the Turkish government largely shut down the migrant flow in the spring, closing off the main pathway for people fleeing the conflicts in Syria and Iraq into Europe.
Traffic from Libya and northern Africa has grown and has become deadlier, according to U.N. figures. Last year, 153,846 people arrived in Italy via the central Mediterranean route — a figure that has just been surpassed in 2016. The arrivals in Italy last month were more than triple those of a year earlier.
Rescued migrants have told the U.N. refugee agency that smugglers along the route were telling migrants that responsibility for rescues would soon shift to Libya, and that any rescued refugees would be returned to Libya rather than carried onward to Italy, the U.N. refugee agency said. That could be a cause of the current spike.
The shifting migration patterns have been a boon to smugglers, who now face increased demand across the trickier North African route. Smugglers are sending out large groups in several ships at once, complicating rescue efforts if multiple boats capsize, U.N. refugee agency spokesman William Spindler said in October. It was not immediately clear whether Wednesday’s incidents were connected to a single smuggling operation.
