TELEGRAPH
More than 80 migrants are feared to have died in the Mediterranean in twin tragedies as they tried to reach the shores of Italy and Greece.
Turkish officials said on Friday that 22 migrants, including at least five children, drowned after their boat capsized off Turkey’s largest island, Gokceada, which is also known as Imbros.
The migrants’ nationalities were not clear, but in recent years tens of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans have crossed the Aegean in boats organised by smugglers.
“The Turkish coastguard found the bodies of 22 people,” the local governor’s office said in a statement.
There has been a rise in the number of migrants and refugees trying to cross the Aegean in recent weeks.
In the second incident, around 60 people who tried to cross by boat from Libya to Italy were reported to have died of hunger and thirst. The motor on their boat broke down and they drifted at sea for more than a week. The fatalities included women and at least one child, according to survivors.
Around 25 survivors from Mali, Senegal and Gambia were found on a deflating rubber dinghy in the middle of the Mediterranean. The dinghy was spotted by the Ocean Viking, a rescue ship belonging to the humanitarian organisation SOS Méditerranée. “These people saw many of their dear ones die,” one of the rescuers, identified only as Massimo, said in a video released by the NGO.
Two of the migrants were unconscious and had to evacuated by Italian military helicopter to Sicily.
The other 23 were dehydrated, traumatised and had burns from fuel on board the boat.
Since the start of the year, at least 226 migrants are estimated to have died on the dangerous central Mediterranean route between North Africa and Italy.
So far this year, more than 31,000 irregular migrants have reached the EU, according to the bloc’s border agency, Frontex. The top three nationalities were Malians, Syrians and Afghans.
That is similar to the number who arrived in the same period last year.
In Italy, the conservative government of prime minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to crack down on the arrivals, so far without much success. Last year, 156,000 asylum seekers reached Italy, a 50 per cent increase on the year before.
