78 bodies were found, but a total of more than 500 dead is to be expected. A tragedy that recalls the death of 800 migrants in 2015, the deadliest shipwreck recorded to date.
The sinking of a fishing boat off Greece with between 600 and 700 migrants on board will undoubtedly be among the worst disasters in the long list of fatal migrant crossings in the Mediterranean Sea. This Friday, the provisional toll is still 79 dead, but we must ultimately fear “hundreds“victims”additional“, announced on Thursday the International Organization for Migration.
To date, only one hundred and four people have been rescued, and “hopes of finding survivors are dwindling by the minute“, told AFP this Friday Stella Nanou, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Greece, who specifies that “research must continue“. In the endthe human toll could therefore exceed 500 dead, or even approach 600.
The passengers, mostly from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan, left Tobruk, eastern Libya, on June 9. Coastguards from the EU’s border watchdog agency, Frontex, reportedly offered help on two occasions, but the captain refused, saying they were heading for Italy. Around 3 a.m., off the Peloponnese, “the engine stopped and the boat suddenly capsized. 47 nautical miles (87 km) from Pylos, in the Peloponnese peninsula. Nine alleged smugglers, Egyptians, were arrested on Friday in Greece and will appear on Monday before the Kalamata prosecutor’s office for “human trafficking“.
It is not the first time that hundreds of migrants have been victims of smuggling in the Mediterranean. Shipwrecks of migrants aboard dilapidated and overloaded boats, Greece has experienced them, but also Italy and Malta. Since 2014, 27,047 people have disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the count of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
More than 800 dead on board a trawler in 2015
The deadliest tragedy remains, to date, that of April 2015. Its magnitude has long remained unknown, and for good reason: given the size of the small trawler that arrived in Sicily, the firefighters had estimated that it could not contain more than 250 bodies. Twenty-four victims had been found the night of the tragedy, and the Italian navy had subsequently recovered 219 other bodies around the wreckage. A few months later, the Italian authorities sent a new team to investigate the wreckage, which lay 370 meters deep. With the human remains found in the hold, the engine room and even the anchor chain well forward, investigators filled 458 body bags. Forensic pathologists examined the contents of these bags for more than three months. They deduced that the boat contained the equivalent of more than 5 migrants per m2! 18 months after the sinking, the Italian authorities therefore revealed its true extent: an estimate revised to more than 800 dead.
This real assessment, which makes it the deadliest event in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the 21st century, has highlighted the criminal role of smugglers overloading their boats. “How was it possible to put up to 900 people in there! They couldn’t make it alive“, was indignant Vittorio Piscitelli, extraordinary commissioner for missing persons. The captain and his mate, a Tunisian and a Syrian, were tried in Sicily and sentenced respectively to eighteen years in prison and five years for the other, for “homicide, sinking and aiding illegal immigration“.
“Tragedy of Lampedusa” in October 2013
Another tragedy of sad memory, that which occurred off Lampedusa in October 2013. In the center of the triangle between Malta, Libya and the small Sicilian island, 336 people, including children, perished in the holds of a fishing boat which caught fire.
A few hours after their departure from Libya, the boat had been hit by a shot from a boat flying the Berber flag. The migrant boat had started to take on water. Distraught, the passengers then set fire to clothes and blankets, hoping to attract the attention of other boats that could rescue them.
The UN Human Rights Committee has blamed the Italian authorities for failing to respond to phone calls from the migrants, made to the rescue coordination center and the Malta Armed Forces between 1pm and 3pm. At Malta’s request, Italy finally sent its navy vessel ITS Libra, which was nearby, but the vessel arrived on the scene too late. Following this tragedy, some survivors sued the Italian authorities in various courts. They feel that Rome did not take “appropriate measures to save their loved ones, and therefore violated their right to life“. “Even though the sunken ship was not located in Italy’s search and rescue zone, she had a dutyto act, judged Hélène Tigroudja, member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
June 2016: 320 dead off Crete
On the night of June 2 to 3, 2016, a small boat of 25 meters was reported in the Cretan Sea by an Italian merchant ship. It was already half sunk. The alert given, Italian coastguard vessels diverted. But it was too late. The next morning around 7 a.m., one of them indicated that the boat had capsized. 342 people had been saved, but how many had lost their lives? In Libya, 117 bodies, mostly women, as well as six children, were first found.
A few days later, the death toll rose to 320. But many of the passengers were never found. According to accounts collected by IOM from survivors, a total of 650 people were on board the boat that left Alexandria in Egypt.
In April of the same year, a migrant boat, apparently leaving from Tobruk in Libya, had already been shipwrecked in the same area. Based on survivors’ accounts, the number of casualties was estimated at 500 dead and missing. Forty-one survivors had been taken in, from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan.
Read alsoMigration crisis: why has the number of migrants quadrupled in the Mediterranean?
To these most spectacular tragedies are added many others less exceptional in scope, but just as deadly. They have become so numerous that they go unnoticed. And keep increasing. In the first quarter of 2023, the IMO reported the deadliest quarter for migrants in the Central Mediterranean since 2017, with 441 migrant deaths in just 3 months.
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