ROME - Some 700 migrants and refugees are feared to have died in three shipwrecks that occurred in the southern Mediterranean this week, the United Nation refugee agency UNCHR and charities assisting survivors in Italy said on Sunday.
A major incident took place off the Libyan coasts on Thursday, and would have claimed the highest death toll.
“We will never know the exact number and their identity, but survivors tell that over 500 human beings died,” UNHCR spokesperson Carlotta Sami said on Twitter referring to this shipwreck.
The migrants and refugees had sailed aboard two fishing boats and an inflatable craft from the Libyan port of Sabratha the day before, according to what survivors told Save the Children charity in Pozzallo, Sicily.
“They said the first fishing boat carried some 500 people, and was towing the second, with over 400 on board,” Giovanna Di Benedetto, spokesperson for Save the Children in Sicily, told Xinhua.
The third craft, a dinghy, had at least 100 people on board.
“On Thursday morning, the second fishing boat began to sink, and few dozens people were able to leave this craft and find safety onto the first boat by swimming or holding the rope linking the vessels,” she added. Then, the second boat sank quickly, and reportedly took hundreds of people down in the waters, according to Di Benedetto.
The people who spoke with the humanitarian officers, both survivors of the second boat and witnesses from the first one, were mainly of Eritrean origin, the spokesperson told Xinhua.(Xinhua)