A rubber boat crowded with migrants
deflated and foundered in the Mediterranean, and as many as 40 people
apparently drowned before an approaching merchant ship could get to
them, witnesses told the humanitarian group Save the Children on
Tuesday, The New York Times reports.
Counting the latest shipwreck, the death
toll for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe this year
is now more than 1,800. Even so, the number of people attempting the
crossing on smuggler boats is rising sharply. The Italian authorities
reported that nearly 6,000 people were rescued in the Mediterranean in a
48-hour period over the weekend, including a woman who gave birth to a
baby girl on an Italian naval vessel.
The
situation has become a humanitarian crisis for Europe, especially after
an overloaded vessel capsized during a rescue attempt last month,
drowning at least 700 people near the Libyan coast. European leaders
responded by tripling their budget for search and rescue operations and
by promising to crack down on traffickers, but critics called the
response inadequate. The latest sinking occurred Sunday morning.
Survivors who arrived in the Sicilian port of Catania on Tuesday and
spoke to Save the Children representatives gave this account: Smugglers
launched two rubber boats full of migrants from the Libyan coast, and
one of them, carrying 105 migrants, was safely rescued at sea by a
passing merchant ship. But the second boat, with 197 people, began to
steadily lose air, until some people crowded near the edges fell into
the sea. Giovanna Di Benedetto, a Save the Children representative in
Catania who spoke to survivors, cautioned that the exact details still
needed to be verified by the authorities.
“Shipwrecks have tragically become a
daily occurrence,” Ms. Di Benedetto said. “We appeal to Europe to
finally establish a system that will carry out search and rescue
missions at sea.”
Libya has emerged as a haven for
smuggling groups, who are making millions of dollars from desperate
migrants whom they load into dangerous fishing boats or rubber vessels
and send north toward Europe. Survivors of the episode on Sunday said
that most of the migrants on the two rubber boats were from Ghana,
Zambia, Senegal, Mali or the Ivory Coast, and that several were
children.
Hundreds of rescued migrants now arrive
almost every day in Sicily. Many have been Syrians or Eritreans hoping
to slip through Italy and reach northern Europe, where asylum benefits
tend to be more generous. But there has been a noticeable increase this
year in migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, including men who were working
in Libya but have fled because of rising violence and instability
there.
More than 1,200 migrants have been
delivered to the small Sicilian port of Pozzallo since Sunday, including
several hundred rescued by a private humanitarian group, the Migrant
Offshore Aid Station, which is based in Malta.
Meanwhile, the Italian Navy released a
photograph of the baby girl who was born on the navy patrol ship Bettica
over the weekend. The captain, Vincenzo Pascale, told Italian state
news media that the mother, a Nigerian, gave birth after six hours of
labor with the assistance of a midwife. A photograph of the infant was
published widely by news outlets, especially in Italy and Britain, where
her humble birth was contrasted with that of the new British princess,
Charlotte.
Initially, the Italian news agency ANSA
reported, the authorities were calling the baby Francesca Marina, with
the first name honoring Pope Francis and the second “in honor of the
navy,” Captain Pascale said.
But it appears that the mother has other ideas. She is said to have decided on a different name for her new daughter: Gift.
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