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Hope fades for more Med survivors

August 6, 2015

Rescuers continue to search for survivors after a boat capsized Wednesday off the coast of Libya. Some 340 people have been rescued, but hopes of finding more survivors among the up to 600 on board the ship are fading.

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MOAS Mittelmeer Flüchtlingsrettung Phoenix Helikopter
Image: MOAS/Peter Mercieca

Several boats spent the night looking for survivors following the capsize of a boat on carrying up to 600 people on Wednesday. So far, 373 people had been rescued and are due to arrive in Palermo, Sicily, on Thursday, according to a spokesman from the Italian coastguard.

A total of 25 bodies have been retrieved from the sea, and more than 200 people are feared dead.

On Wednesday morning, the migrants made a distress call when their fishing boat started taking on water and the engine room was flooded, 15 miles north of the Libyan town of Zouara, not far from the Tunisian border.

The distress call was picked up in Sicily and one of the first ships on the scene was an Irish navy vessel, the LE Niamh; just before 12:50 p.m. local time. But as the ship launched it boats, the migrants apparently moved to one side of the fishing boat, causing it to capsize.

Karte Schiffsunglück vor Libiens Küste Englisch

100 migrants feared trapped in ship's hull

The LE Niamh rescued 342 men, 12 women and 13 children as part of a vast rescue operation that involved seven ships, a helicopter and a drone. But as many as 100 migrants are believed to have been in the ship's hull when it tipped over.

Six survivors in need of urgent medical care, including a baby suffering from a fever and a Bangladeshi man with a broken leg, were flown by helicopter during the night to Lampedusa, the Italian island nearest to the African coast, according to a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Despite a significant strengthening of the European maritime rescue operation Triton, whose resources and skills are now similar to those of the former Italian mission Mare Nostrum, the conditions in which migrants try to cross the Mediterranean make every trip perilous.

More than 2,000 migrants have died so far this year attempting to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,270 deaths for all of 2014, according to figures released on Tuesday by the International Organization for Migration.

Mittelmeer gesunkenes Flüchtlingsboot - Überlebende
A boat packed with up to 700 African migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya on WednesdayImage: Reuters/M. Soszynska

The deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean in decades occurred in April this year, when a fishing boat with up to 800 migrants sank.

The EU has been looking for UN support to take action against migrant smugglers, who have profited from the turmoil within Libya, where most of the migrants begin their sea journey. Intervention has been made more difficult by a power struggle between the country's two governments.

mh/sms (AFP, dpa)