By Alan Cowell
Monday, May 09, 2011
Sybella Wilkes, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based organization, said there had been a “dramatic increase in the number of boats making this terrible journey” as migrants, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa, tried to flee Libya’s turmoil, heading for sanctuary on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
“The majority of the boats are unseaworthy and in terrible condition and overloaded,” Ms. Wilkes said in a telephone interview.
On Friday, she said, witnesses in Tripoli had reported that a ship carrying around 600 people had broken up just 100 yards out of the port of Tripoli. “It’s not clear how many people died or drowned,” she said, but 16 bodies — including those of two babies — had been recovered.
The witnesses, including a high-ranking Somali diplomat in Tripoli, said many of those on the stricken vessel were Somalis, she said. She said the United Nations refugee agency’s own staff members had not witnessed the event.
Ms. Wilkes said there were currently many ships in the Mediterranean, both on routine commercial journeys and on military missions relating to NATO operations in Libya. She said the agency — the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — was urging all crews to be especially alert for vessels in distress.
Before the so-called Arab Spring began to sweep through North Africa months ago, several North African countries, including Libya and Tunisia, routinely policed their coastlines to prevent migrants from trying to reach southern European countries that did not welcome them.
But those controls dissolved as uprisings broke out, leaving many migrants from sub-Saharan Africa stranded, particularly in Libya. Tens of thousands of migrants have since reached southern Europe, straining Italy’s ability to absorb them and challenging European laws permitting free travel between European nations.
The latest report from the United Nations refugee agency followed an account in The Guardian newspaper that said that dozens of African migrants on a foundering boat were left to die after a number of European and NATO military units apparently ignored their cries for help.
The case occurred in late March, The Guardian said. A vessel carrying 72 people ran into trouble and drifted in open waters for 16 days, it said; only 11 survived. The newspaper quoted survivors as saying their calls for rescue were ignored both by the Italian coast guard and by the an unidentified military helicopter, despite international rules obliging crews to respond to distress calls.
Source: NY Times