Up to 500 migrants were feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean after people smugglers deliberately rammed their boat, it was announced on Monday, as a second disaster claimed as many as 160 lives off the coast of Libya.
In the first tragedy, survivors of the sinking told officials from the International Organisation for Migration that around 500 people had been on a boat sailing from the coast of Egypt towards Malta last week and that most had drowned at sea.
The horrific story, which if confirmed would rank as the worst disaster in the Mediterranean for years, was recounted by two Palestinians who spent more than a day floating in the water before being picked up by a Panama-flagged merchant vessel about 300 miles off Malta.
They were brought to the port of Pozzallo in Sicily at the weekend, where they told their story to IoM officials.
Nine other survivors were rescued by Greek and Maltese rescue vessels.
The two Palestinians, believed to be fleeing Gaza, said the boat, packed with refugees and migrants from Syria, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Egypt, set sail from the Egyptian coast on Sept 6.
The large group included small children and unaccompanied minors.
When the people traffickers in charge of the crossing ordered their human cargo to transfer to another, smaller boat in the middle of the sea, they refused.
A furious argument broke out and the traffickers in the smaller vessel allegedly rammed the migrants’ boat, forcing it to capsize.
"If this story, which the police are investigating, is confirmed, it would be the worst shipwreck in recent years. It is particularly grave, in that it seems to have been not an accident but mass murder, perpetrated by criminals without scruples or any respect for human life," IOM said in a statement.
Among the hundreds of migrants who drowned was a young Egyptian boy who had hoped to earn enough money in Europe to pay for his father's heart operation, the Palestinians said.
He clung to a life buoy along with one of the Palestinians but, suffering from exposure and hypothermia, was unable to hold on and slipped beneath the water.
In the second tragedy, more than 160 African migrants were feared dead on Monday after an overloaded boat heading for Italy capsized off the coast of Libya.
Libyan officials recovered dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, from the sea off the coast of Tajoura, to the east of the capital, Tripoli.
Just 36 people had been rescued, officials said, although the search effort was continuing.
The boat was believed to have been packed with more than 200 migrants who had paid people traffickers thousands of pounds to take them to Italy.
The two shipwrecks were the latest in a series of similar tragedies in the Mediterranean.
The wars in Iraq and Syria, poverty and unrest in the Horn of Africa and West Africa, and chaos in Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi has spurred a massive exodus of refugees towards Europe.
Italy has saved more than 100,000 boat people since last October when it launched a humanitarian effort called Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) to intercept and rescue the migrants trying to reach the islands of Lampedusa and Sicily, the nearest landfall to North Africa.
Since 1988, more than 20,000 adults and children have lost their lives trying to reach Europe by sea, according to Fortress Europe, a website that tracks the fatalities.
Enticed by the prospect of making tens of thousands of pounds from each crossing, people smugglers were putting migrants in increasingly “decrepit and overcrowded boats, causing directly or indirectly the death of thousands of people,” the IOM said.
The organisation called on the international community to identify, catch and punish the traffickers, while at the same time depriving them of their livelihood by opening up “legal avenues” for people fleeing war and persecution to enter Europe.
The actress Angelina Jolie, who is a special envoy for the United Nations’ refugee agency, also urged the international community to "wake up to the scale of the crisis."
"There is a direct link between the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere and the rise in deaths at sea in the Mediterranean," she said.
"We have to understand what drives people to take the fearful step of risking their children's lives on crowded, unsafe vessels. It is the overwhelming desire to find refuge," she said.telegraph.co.uk
