BRUSSELS – At least 239 migrants are believed to have drowned in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, the UN 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, UN 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.
“This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said.
Sami said that the 29 survivors of the first wreck said that their wooden boat broke apart soon after departing Libya, and that many children and women were on board, including pregnant women. The survivors said they were in the Mediterranean’s cold waters for hours before being rescued Wednesday afternoon. The survivors said that 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.
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 rescues.
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.