(MENAFN- Gulf Times) More than 330 migrants are feared dead following the most serious string of incidents in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said yesterday.
"This is a tragedy on an enormous scale and a stark reminder that more lives could be lost if those seeking safety are left at the mercy of the sea," UNHCR Europe director Vincent Cochetel said in a statement. "Saving lives should be our top priority. Europe cannot afford to do too little too late."
More than 400 migrants were loaded on a beach near Tripoli on four inflatable rubber boats on Saturday by Libya-based people smugglers, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said, quoting accounts from survivors.
They were directed towards Italy despite a force 7 storm.
Nine people arrived in Lampedusa yesterday, two days after being picked up from two of the dinghies by an Italian cargo ship.
They told authorities that 203 of their number had died, Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Italy, told DPA.
"There are nine of them and they are safe after four days at sea. The other 203 have been swallowed by the sea," Sami wrote on Twitter.
In another message, she said the youngest victim was a 12-year-old boy.
The IOM said the surviving migrants from the latest disaster spoke French, so probably came from west Africa.
"Because of the bad weather conditions, the two dinghies collapsed and the people fell at sea. Many drowned," said the IOM spokesman in Italy, Flavio Di Giacomo.
The organisation's spokesman in Geneva Joel Millman told AFP that information was coming in about another stricken boat and warned that the overall toll may reach as many as 350.
The tragedy has upped pressure on the European Union to bolster search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean, which were scaled back at the end of last year despite widespread criticism from human rights groups.
On Monday, more than 100 people were rescued by the Italian coast guard from a third vessel at risk of sinking in stormy seas.
However, 29 of them died while on the way to Lampedusa, most of them from hypothermia, officials said.
Yesterday's survivors € who were said to hail from sub-Saharan Africa and to be in fairly good condition after being forced to face rough seas with no water or food € told authorities that a fourth vessel was missing.
"We know that there were four inflatable rafts on the shore. Another one with approximately 100 (people) on it is missing," one survivor was quoted as saying by IOM.
The Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Nils Muiznieks, reacted on Twitter: "Another preventable migration tragedy in the Mediterranean. The EU needs effective search and rescue. Triton does not meet this need."
Triton is run by EU border agency Frontex. It partially replaced Italy's Mare Nostrum, which operated on a wider scale but was phased out because Rome authorities said they could not afford the ‚¬9mn-a-month ($10mn) mission on their own.
Mare Nostrum was launched in October 2013 following a pair of shipping disasters near Lampedusa and off Malta which claimed more than 500 lives.
Over the course of 12 months, it rescued more than 100,000 sea migrants, a record figure.
Pope Francis € who in November warned the EU against turning the Mediterranean into "a big cemetery" € offered prayers for the victims during his weekly audience at the Vatican, and repeated "calls for solidarity, so that nobody is denied necessary rescue".
Amnesty International accused EU governments of "burying their heads in the sand".
"It's a simple equation € as the number of people taking this perilous sea route goes up and the resources put into search and rescue go down, more people will die," Amnesty official John Dalhuisen said in a statement.
In Brussels, the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, tried to deflect criticism.
"Pointing fingers is not going to get us anywhere. Tackling this common challenge has to be a joint effort of the commission and the member states working together," spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said.
Calling on national governments and the European Parliament to grant more funds to Frontex, she said it could not act as a fully-fledged European border guard system with a ‚¬90mn ($102mn) yearly budget.
Bertaud also spoke of the need to co-operate with countries of origin and transit to establish "legal channels so that migrants wouldn't have to get in these unseaworthy boats in the first place".
On Tuesday, the Geneva-based UNHCR calculated that more than 3,500 sea migrants had arrived in Italy in January 2015, compared to just under 2,200 in the same month of 2014.
It also said that by this point last year, only 12 migrant sea deaths had been reported.
Attempts to expand rescue missions in the Mediterranean are likely to be controversial.
When Mare Nostrum was active, officials complained that it encouraged irregular migration into the EU, by making Mediterranean sea crossings safer.
Migration is a sensitive topic in Europe, especially after last month's jihadist attacks in Paris, which led right-wing parties to call for the end of Europe's border-free Schengen zone, and to claim that terrorists could hide among sea migrants from Africa.
Former Italian premier Enrico Letta, whose government approved Mare Nostrum, wrote on Twitter that the rescue mission needed to be reinstated "regardless of whether other European countries want it or not. Regardless of whether it is a vote-loser or not".
On Tuesday, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano appealed for a "more vigorous" European response to tackle the crisis.
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