No fewer than 40 African migrants are feared drowned off the coast of Libya.Survivors
who came ashore in Sicily after being rescued by a German navy ship
told aid agencies that their boat had started to fall apart shortly
after putting to sea near Tripoli.The ship brought nearly 300
migrants, most of them men, to Port Augusta on Sicily’s eastern
coast in Italy.
According to the UN aid agency, the dead are from sub-Saharan countries such as
Benin, Mali and Senegal.The Italian coastguard says 2,000 migrants
have been rescued in a 24-hour period.Eight rescue operations were
carried out by ships from Italy, Germany, Malta and Sweden.
The
International Organisation for Migration says 150,000 migrants have
come to Europe by sea this year from sub-Saharan Africa and the
Middle East.Many don’t get that far and end up in Libyan
detention centres, where evidence of rough conditions has been
uncovered by Britain’s Sky News.Its investigation
into people smuggling heard
that traffickers manage to escape the authorities thanks to their
money and power while migrants’ families pay the smugglers more
money to get their relatives out of jail.
