Heartbreaking scenes on Greek island as rescuers drag drowning migrants from capsized ship after 1,000 die in THREE tragedies in just 24 hours
- The pair were passengers on board a wooden migrant boat from when it ran aground in Rhodes, Greece
- Three died in the tragedy which is the third in 24 hours across European waters with up to 1,000 feared dead
- Yesterday a ship carrying a reported 950 people capsized off Libya when its passengers rushed to one side
- Some 300 people who were locked in its hull by callous human smugglers 'died like rats in a cage' when it sank
- Italian prosecutors are investigation claims the vessel may have overturned after colliding with a merchant ship
- Two more boats in distress on Monday afternoon as European leaders call an emergency summit to handle crisis
Anguish etched on her face and held safe by the bare-chested man who has dragged her from the sea, she seems unable to comprehend what has happened to her.
Around her are scenes of chaos as dozens of men battle to drag other survivors from the treacherous waves. But not all are so lucky. A short distance away, a tiny corpse is carried to land, his woolly hat dripping salt water.
These are the harrowing scenes on the shores of Europe today as up to 1,000 migrants are feared dead after three separate disasters.
On the Greek island of Rhodes, the unknown child is one of three to have died when the boat carrying him ran aground. The woman is one of hundreds of survivors now seeking refuge after narrowly avoiding drowning.
Elsewhere more than 900 mainly African migrants are believed to have perished when a 75 foot fishing boat capsized off Libya in one of the worst maritime tragedies since the Second World War.
Survivors claimed up to 300 people including women and children 'drowned like rats in cages' after being locked in the hold by callous traffickers. In a frantic fight for life, they clung to their dead bodies to stay afloat.
Another two boats are thought to be in danger off the coast of Libya with Maltese and Italian coastguards tending to them. Twenty are already feared dead aboard one of the vessels, both of which are carrying more than 100 people.
Anguish etched on her face and held safe by the bare-chested man who has dragged her from the sea, she seems unable to comprehend what has happened to her.
Around her are scenes of chaos as dozens of men battle to drag other survivors from the treacherous waves. But not all are so lucky. A short distance away, a tiny corpse is carried to land, his woolly hat dripping salt water.
These are the harrowing scenes on the shores of Europe today as up to 1,000 migrants are feared dead after three separate disasters.
On the Greek island of Rhodes, the unknown child is one of three to have died when the boat carrying him ran aground. The woman is one of hundreds of survivors now seeking refuge after narrowly avoiding drowning.
Elsewhere more than 900 mainly African migrants are believed to have perished when a 75 foot fishing boat capsized off Libya in one of the worst maritime tragedies since the Second World War.
Survivors claimed up to 300 people including women and children 'drowned like rats in cages' after being locked in the hold by callous traffickers. In a frantic fight for life, they clung to their dead bodies to stay afloat.
Another two boats are thought to be in danger off the coast of Libya with Maltese and Italian coastguards tending to them. Twenty are already feared dead aboard one of the vessels, both of which are carrying more than 100 people.
The north African country is riven by a bitter civil war where two rival governments are fighting for control. This has been compounded by the growth of Islamic State within Libya, which earlier this year threatened to send a wave of 500,000 migrants towards Europe's shores.
Mr Muscat said: 'We have what is fast becoming a failed state on our doorsteps and criminal gangs are enjoying a heyday.'
He estimated the criminal gang behind the doomed voyage would have made between 1million and 5million euros.
He said the United Nations should mandate a force to intervene directly in Libya to disrupt or attack traffickers and stop the boats from setting off.
'A time will come when Europe will be judged harshly for its inaction as it was judged when it had turned a blind eye to genocide,' said Muscat, who is in Rome on Monday to meet with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
Mr Renzi said the escalating situation was proof that human smuggling is intensifying around Europe.
The IOM's Federico Soda the organisation had given the Italian coast guard the coordinates for that and two other distressed vessels, but that they were still tied up with the earlier shipwreck.
Humanitarians are calling for European heads of state to abandon usual protocols in order to solve the crisis.
On Monday evening the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, said: 'We understand that EU member states have other preoccupations, but right now they have to give priority to humanitarian concerns.'
If the latest deaths are confirmed, the number of people who have died trying to reach Europe for a better life will have topped 1,650 so far this year - more than 30 times higher than the same period last year.
With ISIS having established strongholds in the towns on Sirte and Derna, and with smaller bases elsewhere in the country, it is thought the surge in numbers of migrants making the dangerous journey could be linked to the terror group's ever-growing presence.
Only this weekend ISIS militants filmed themselves savagely beheading and shooting 30 Ethiopian Christians that authorities believe were would-be migrants that had travelled to Libya with dreams of making a new life in Europe.
Speaking of his concerns that the Christians were migrants, Ethiopian government spokesman Redwan Hussein said: 'If this is confirmed, it will be a warning to people who wish to risk and travel to Europe through the dangerous route.'
Abba Kaletsidk Mulugeta, an official with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church's Patriarchate Office, said he also believed the victims were probably migrants.
'I believe this is just another case of the IS group killing Christians in the name of Islam. Our fellow citizens have just been killed on a faith-based violence that is totally unacceptable,' he said.
'This is outrageous. No religion orders the killing of other people, even people from another religion,' he added.
Fear of capture and execution at the hands of the radical Islamists is no doubt one element driving the desperate migrants to leave Libya as quickly as they can, dangerously overloading vessels operated by heartless people traffickers.
As well as the spread of ISIS in the country, Libya is currently in a state of civil war - with two rival governments controlling and operating in different areas of the country.
People smugglers are taking advantage of the subsequent chaos and confusion tearing the country apart to ply their trade with little to no threat of being caught.
In 2015, there have already been 30 times more migrants dying off the coast of Libya than in 2014, which was itself a record-breaking year.
Experts have also drawn links between the massive rise in would-be migrants and a so-called 'deal in the desert' struck by Tony Blair in 2004 - which saw the late Muammar Gaddafi agree to crack down on human traffickers as well as renouncing Libya's possession of WMDs and decommissioning the country's chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
In 2008 Gaddafi sought to stiff the European Union for £4.1 billion a year in return for halting the flows of migrants in and out of Libya.
In October 2010, the EU paid Libya more than £30 million to stop African migrants passing into Europe.
Gaddafi encouraged the move, saying that it was necessary to prevent the loss of European cultural identity to a new 'Black Europe'.
His barbaric treatment of the would-be migrants was widely condemned.
It was claimed that his officials would round up the migrants and hold them for months or even years in horrendously overcrowded detention centres, where rape, violence and torture were common.
The migrants would then typically be deported to Libya's southern border crossing with Sudan - where they were abandoned in a harsh desert environment - or otherwise flown back to their country of origin without any checks on what they would be facing back home.
As Blair's much touted 'deal in the desert' turned sour, Gaddafi gave people smugglers in Zuwara the green light to resume their trade and the migrant routes have flourished ever since.
CHRISTIANS BUTCHERED BY ISIS ON SHORES OF LIBYA MAY HAVE ALSO BEEN TRYING TO REACH EUROPE
Ethiopian officials have revealed that the 30 Christians filmed being beheaded and shot by Islamic State militants in Libya are likely to have been desperate migrants trying to reach Europe.The 29-minute video released yesterday is titled 'Until It Came To Them - Clear Evidence', and shows dozens of militants butchering two separate groups of men in the north African country.
Now the Ethiopian government spokesman Redwan Hussein said officials are in contact with their embassy in Cairo to establish the authenticity of the video and to work out whether, as suspected, the victims were only in Libya in the hope of boarding a boat bound for Europe.
The news comes just hours after more than 900 migrants are feared to have died when the fishing boat they were travelling in overturned in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after leaving Libya in one of the worst maritime disasters since the end of World War Two.
Speaking of his concerns that the 30 brutally murdered Christians were migrants bound for Europe, Mr Hussein said: 'If this is confirmed, it will be a warning to people who wish to risk and travel to Europe through the dangerous route.'
Abba Kaletsidk Mulugeta, an official with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church's Patriarchate Office, said he also believed the victims were probably migrants.
'I believe this is just another case of the IS group killing Christians in the name of Islam. Our fellow citizens have just been killed on a faith-based violence that is totally unacceptable,' he said.
'This is outrageous. No religion orders the killing of other people, even people from another religion,' he added.
Ethiopia's options to retaliate remain slim, given its distance from Libya.
However, Ethiopian Ambassador to Egypt Mohammed Edrees said his country could partner with Cairo to strike the militants.
'That could be an option,' Mr Edrees. 'We will see and explore what is possible to deal with group.'
Politicians and charities have also attacked EU states for supporting Italy's controversial decision to stop search and rescue operations last year which they blame for contributing to a such a high number of deaths.
Mr Muscat said survivors spoke of 'haunting experiences.'
Italian media said a 32-year-old Bangladeshi brought by helicopter to hospital in Sicily told police there had been 950 passengers on the boat, which sank when people on board rushed to one side to attract attention from a passing merchant ship.
'There were also 200 women and 50 children with us. Many were shut in the hold. They died like rats in a cage,' he was reported as saying by La Sicilia.
He also told La Repubblica: 'Me and others survived because we were on the deck, others drowned and many others were prisoners in the hold of the boat because the traffickers closed the portholes to stop them from coming out and they have finished at the bottom of the sea.'
He has been interviewed by prosecutors and is currently being treated in a hospital.
Italian authorities are now investigating whether the aforementioned merchant ship collided with the fishing boat.
‘We are investigating whether there was a collision or if on seeing the ship the migrants moved causing the overcrowded boat to capsize,' said Catania prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said.
Survivors have told of how they clung to their comrades' corpses as night fell in the dark waters.
'We held onto the dead so we wouldn't sink to the bottom,' said one pair, found among the dead when rescuers arrived at the boat late last night.
They were saved when the coastguard heard their tired screams.
'While we searched through the sea filled with corpses we found two people alive among the dead,’ one responder said.
‘They were weary and tired and shouted with their last strength when they heard the noise of the engine.
‘Thankfully we were able to locate them and save them otherwise would not have lasted much longer.
The small numbers of survivors make more sense if hundreds of people were locked in the hold, because with so much weight down below, 'surely the boat would have sunk,' said General Antonino Iraso, of the Italian Border Police, which has deployed boats in the operation.
An international aid agency spokeswoman has compared the scale of deaths in recent shipwrecks to the death toll in the sinking of the Titanic luxury liner more than a century ago.
Sarah Tyler, a spokeswoman for Save the Children in Catania, Sicily, said more than 1,000 people have died in the waters of the Mediterranean in recent weeks.
She added: 'That is almost as many as died in the Titanic, and 31 times the number who died when the Costa Concordia sank.'
This morning EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini told European nations they had 'no more excuses' not to act on the migrant crisis.
EU foreign and interior ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss the flood of people desperately trying to reach Europe.
Arriving at the talks in Luxembourg, Mogherini said the 28-nation EU had 'no more excuses' now not to come up with a common response to the migrant tide.
'We need immediate action from the EU and the member states,' she said.
EU president Donald Tusk said he would host an emergency summit on the crisis on Thursday.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose country is among those bearing the brunt of the flood of migrants, said Rome was studying the possibility of mounting 'targeted interventions' against the Libya-based people smugglers behind the crossings.
Rescuers recovered 24 bodies from the sea following the disaster, which took place off Libyan waters, south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, shortly after midnight on Sunday.
Francesco Gallo, an officer on board the Guardia Finanza police boat Monte Sperone, told of the harrowing moment he picked up the lifeless body of a small boy.
He told Corriere della Sera: 'We approached in the rubber dinghy and in my heart I prayed that he was alive, but the hope died soon after.
'He was a little black boy. He would have been about ten. I held him in my arms as if he were my own son.
'We are afraid to think about what we will find underneath us.'
The ship's captain Paolo Zottola said his team would not stop until they have found everyone - dead or alive.
He said: 'It's a hard job, our job, but we have to do it. Unfortunately we can't work miracles. But you never get used to the pain.'
He added: 'With the water temperature so cold at midnight they wouldn't have survived more than half and hour'.
Meanwhile, about 100 migrants rescued by a different merchant vessel in a separate operation were being brought to the Sicilian port of Pozzallo late Sunday night, authorities said.
The tragedy also comes just days after another shipwreck in the area claimed 400 lives.
It is thought both boats capsized after those on board rushed to one side to signal to passing merchant ships.
Mr Muscat said the incident was further evidence that Italy and Malta need more support in dealing with the migrant crisis.
'A time will come when Europe will be judged harshly for its inaction as it was judged when it had turned a blind eye to genocide', he said.
'They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water. This could possibly be the biggest tragedy to have ever taken place in the Mediterranean.'
Foreign ministers have added the issue of migrants to the agenda of a European Union meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
'Europe can do more and Europe must do more,' said Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament.
'It is a shame and a confession of failure how many countries run away from responsibility and how little money we provide for rescue missions.'
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the latest incident shows the UK needs to change its stance.
'The British Government must immediately reverse its opposition to EU search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, as the EU needs to restart the rescue as soon as possible', she said.
'It is immoral to turn our backs and leave people to drown in order to deter other desperate travellers - and of course it hasn't worked.
'Since the operations were cancelled even more people have tried to cross the Mediterranean, and thousands have died.
'The EU should do the basic, humanitarian thing and rescue those in peril on the sea.'
Last October, Britain and other EU nations backed Italy's decision to scale back the migrant patrol operation, replacing it with a much more limited EU 'border operation' plan,
This operates within just 30 miles of the coast and does not conduct search and rescue missions,
Italy claimed the presence of rescue ships was encouraging migrants to attempt the crossing.
Yet their new policy does not seem to be deterring migrants.
Last week alone 10,000 were rescued by the Italian navy - an unprecedented number.
Charities Amnesty International and Save The Children joined the calls for search and rescue operations to be reinstated.
And Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said he had asked for an urgent meeting of EU leaders, adding: 'Italy asks not to be left on its own'.
'The trafficking of migrants amounted to 'a new slave trade'. We must all fight against human traffickers that are the slavers of the 21st century, he added.
'We are not talking about statistics but our brothers and sisters and of human lives.'
Growing numbers of Africans have been setting off on ill-fated voyages to Europe from Libya and the country's coastlines has become a prime target for people-smugglers.
The warm weather has also tempted tens of thousands of migrants in the past week alone to attempt the crossing.
The boat in the latest tragedy set off from Libya on Saturday and sent out a distress signal shortly before midnight 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The boat initially set off from Egypt and then stopped off on the Libyan coast near the city Zuwarah to pick up more passengers, it reported.
The Coast Guard said there was no immediate way of finding out exactly how many passengers were on the boat or how many might still be rescued, but authorities fear there could have been as many as 950 migrants on board according to Italian news agency ANSA.
General Antonino Iraso of the Italian Guardia Finanza police, which is involved in the rescue attempt, said that if the numbers were confirmed it would be the worst shipping disaster since the Second World War.
FARAGE: 'BRITAIN SHOULD ONLY LET IN CHRISTIANS FLEEING LIBYA'
Nigel Farage today claimed Britain should only accept refugees who are Christian.
The Ukip leader risked being accused of discriminating on the basis of religion, as he suggested living in Libya is now 'virtually impossible' for Christians.
He also claimed David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy's 'fanaticism' in bombing Libya directly caused the problem of migrant tragedies at sea.
Mr Farage said the 2011 military action completely destabilised the north African country and turned it into a place of 'much savagery'.
The Ukip leader was challenged over whether his anti-EU stance was at odds with the need for a pan-European solution to the crisis of refugees fleeing north Africa.
But he told BBC1's Sunday Politics: 'It's the European response that caused this problem in the first place.
'The fanaticism of (former French president) Sarkozy and (Prime Minister) Cameron to bomb Libya ... what they've done is to completely destabilise Libya, to turn it into a country with much savagery, to turn it into a place where for Christians the situation is now virtually impossible. We ought to be honest and say we have directly caused this problem.'
Asked if no migrants attempted to enter Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea before military action in Libya, Mr Farage said:
'There were no migrants coming across from Libya in these quantities before we bombed the country, got rid of (then Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddafi - however bad he may have been - and destabilised the whole situation, of that I have no doubt.
'But I'm the one person who has said that I do think, especially for Christians in that part of the world, they now have almost nowhere to go.
'I have not got a problem with us offering refugee status to some Christians from those countries.'
Later the Ukip leader flip-flopped, saying he felt 'sorry' for those who felt compelled to flee their countries.
During a walkabout in Rochester, he said the Government should 'send the Royal Navy down' to help with the crisis but and that David Cameron has 'a very big challenge' when he visits the summit on Thursday.
'We could send the Royal Navy down, but it's a question of what's the signal - is the signal 'If they keep on coming we'll keep on taking you' or is the signal 'We're very sorry, we can't take you'?"'
A rescuer said one of their first discoveries was the body of a boy, no older than 15, who was discovered face down in a pool of oil.
'The boy was one of the first that we recovered, face down in a pool of oil', they said on Sunday.
'We have not found anything since 10am this morning. There's only oil and debris.'
Given that the sea is as deep as 3 miles (5 kilometres) or more in the area, it is possible that many bodies will never be recovered, as was the case in similar tragedies off the coasts of Libya, Italy, and other Mediterranean nations in recent years.
Pope Francis held a moment of prayer for the victims. He said: 'A boat packed with migrants capsized 70 miles off the coast of Libya. They fear hundreds of victims.
'I express my deepest pain in the face of the tragedy. I appeal to the international community to act quickly and decisively to avoid repeating similar tragedies.
'They are men and women like us, our brothers who search for a better life, persecuted, injured, exploited, victims of war, searching for a better life, searching for happiness.'
The UN has now called for EU countries to do more, with refugee agency UNHCR spokesman Carlotta Sami urging the creation of a European version of the Mare Nostrum search and rescue mission.
She said: 'We need a European Mare Nostrum to combat the tragedies of the immigrants in the sea. We have asked for one for more than a year and we have not had an answer.
'If the numbers of the tragedy are confirmed the total number of people who have died in the Mediterranean in the last ten days will be more than 1,000.'
'Today's is a tragedy of enormous proportions, a catastrophe on a scale never seen before in the Mediterranean which confirms the necessity of a European intervention to put in place adequate rescue measures.'
'We are shocked because in the past two days we have seen events of a brutality that we have never seen before. There has been a leap in the cruelty on the part of the traffickers.'
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said 'the current arrangements are clearly leading to these tragic consequence'.
But he insisted that 'cure' lay not at sea but in dealing with the reasons why people are seeking refuge.
Foreign secretary Phillip Hammond said an international 'co-ordinated response' was needed, adding: 'We must target the traffickers who are responsible for so many people dying at sea and prevent their innocent victims from being tricked or forced into making these perilous journeys.'
The Home Office declined to comment last night.
The fishing vessel involved in today's disaster had send out an emergency call after having trouble with steering the vessel, and a Portuguese merchant ship arrived at the scene.
As it approached, dozens of people moved from one side of the vessel to the other, and it capsized, Italian news bureau Ansa reports.
Loris De Filippi of Medecins Sans Frontieres said EU states were culpable for the tragedy. He said: 'A mass grave is being created in the Mediterranean Sea and European policies are responsible.
'Faced with thousands of desperate people fleeing wars and crises, Europe has closed borders, forcing people in search of protection to risk their lives and die at sea.
He said the number of casualties was comparable to 'a warzone'.
'European States must immediately launch large-scale search and rescue operations, with proactive patrolling as close as possible to Libyan shores.
'The current means are obviously not enough. This tragedy is only just beginning, but it can and should be stopped.'
So far, 10,000 migrants have been rescued by the Italian coast guard, navy and merchant vessels this week - an unprecedented number.
The influx of migrants, mainly from Africa attempting to cross the sea from Libya, is putting pressure on Italy's shelter system and raising calls for a better response to the emergency.
Italy has arrested 976 traffickers since its search and rescue operations began.
Yesterday, the International Organization for Migration said the rate of migrant and refugee deaths this year is ten times higher than in 2014, even though the number of those who made it across safely is about the same.
The agency put arrivals so far this year in Italy through Thursday at 21,191. That compares with 26,644 for the first four months of last year.
'This is unacceptable,' said Federico Soda, director of the IOM coordination office for the Mediterranean, calling for more intensive search and rescue efforts. 'This is a humanitarian emergency that involves us all.'
Greece, the EU's second-biggest gateway for migrants after Italy, appealed to its European Union partners Friday for more help in policing its sea borders as immigrants increasingly make dangerous journeys to escape war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa
By Daily Mail
