Libyan Red Cross personnel retrieve body of a migrant washed up on beach. Photo: Stringer/AFP
'Don't leave Italy alone to face migrants': Italian president
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- At least 1,000 feared dead in nine migrant boat wrecks (31 May 16)
Speaking on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the first point of arrival
in Europe for many migrants, Mattarella said Italy and Europe owed a
"debt of gratitude" to the islanders for "the lives saved, for the
welcome given to those fleeing hunger and war".
Mattarella's statement came as Libyan authorities announced the grim
discovery of at least 117 migrants on the shore in the western Libyan
town of Zwara -- possibly from one of another three boats that capsized
last week off the Libyan shores -- and warned that the toll could rise.
"The total number of bodies retrieved until now is 117... 70 percent of
them were women plus six children," said Khames al-Boussefi, media
coordinator to the Libyan Red Crescent.
At the same time, a migrant boat sank off the island of Crete, leaving at least nine people dead and hundreds missing.
Two helicopters, three ships and a coastguard vessel were searching the
waters off the Greek island of Crete where the boat, believed to have
come from Africa with hundreds of migrants on board, capsized.
"Until this point 340 (people) have been rescued and nine bodies have
been recovered," the Greek coastguard said in a statement, without
giving details on the migrants' nationalities.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) earlier said the
vessel was "believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on
board".
The Friday sinking marked the second migrant vessel found in that area
of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people
smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships.
It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or
where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board.
In Greece, a coastguard spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete.
When rescuers reached the scene, about half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman said.
"The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said.
The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a
controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey designed to halt the
flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route has led to a sharp drop
in arrivals.
Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the
Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency
said on Tuesday.
More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey
this year -- the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and
Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War
II.
Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds
of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from nearby Turkey last
year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria.
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