ROME: Over 700 people are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean last week, in the deadliest yet migrant-related incident in over a year. The casualties were shared amongst three separate incidents that occurred last week after 13,000 people set sail from Libya for Italy in an eight-day period.
UN refugee agency confirmed the incident was the highest weekly death toll since April 2015, when more than 1300 died in two separate incidents off Libya. "We are sure about this," UNHCR spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said. "We can say that most probably there were more than 700 dead." Rescue teams involved in the mission said it was a shocking sight to be confronted by the shipwrecks. "There were already many dead bodies floating in the sea. Some of them were between life and death because they weren't reacting, but still breathing," said Giorgia Linardi, a member of the rescue team from German NGO Sea Watch. "Whether they made it, we don't know, because then we handed them to the Italian warship."
The incident is yet another proof of failed attempts to crackdown on smugglers in the southern Mediterranean. Almost the same number of people arrived in Italy in the first five months of 2016, as during the same period the year beforethat. One of the many NGOs involved to rescue people, Sea Watch said the scenes were the partial result of Europe failing to create a designated search-and-rescue operation. The EU has set up an anti-smuggling naval mission, which helps out with rescues when needed, but this is not its official role.
The humanitarian situation is under extreme crisis in Greece, where more than 50,000 migrants have been stuck since the Macedonian border was closed. Dozens of migrants in Athens suffered from bad food poisoning after the government managed to supply a bad batch of meals. More than 40 Syrians are on a hunger strike in protest of their continued detention, and thousands of people are kept in military-run camps in northern Greece. A British activist said, "I've visited a lot of the new camps, some of them are OK, but some of them are horrific. They're disused factories, flooding and very dirty. People are getting one portion of food every day, not three portions."
