More boats filled with migrants sent distress calls from the Mediterranean on Monday as European lawmakers struggled to find new ways to confront an escalating crisis after what appeared to be the deadliest mass drowning to date.
Officials fear as many as 700 people may have perished late Saturday when a boat packed with Europe-bound migrants, mostly from Africa and Asia, capsized in the waters between Italy and Libya.
Hundreds on board were apparently locked into a pair of lower decks when the 75-foot-long wooden fishing vessel -- not quite the length of a tennis court -- tipped over and sank in deep waters off the coast of Libya, authorities said. Smugglers routinely pack migrant ships with “layers” of passengers, experts say, with many consigned to lower decks, where the odds of surviving a shipwreck are greatly reduced.
“Many will not have had a chance to escape and will have gone down with the ship,” Giovanni Salvi, a Sicilian prosecutor investigating the case, told reporters here.
None of the several hundred women and children believed to have been on the craft were among the 28 survivors, the prosecutor said.
On Monday, officials reported receiving at least two more calls for help from several craft at sea carrying about 300 migrants. Rescue teams were said to be responding.
In Greece, like Italy a major gateway to Europe, officials said at least three more migrants had perished when their wooden vessel ran aground off the island of Rhodes. Dramatic images from the scene showed rescuers in heavy surf wading amid the floating debris of the migrants’ shattered boat to drag exhausted survivors ashore.
A grim procession took place Monday in Valletta, the capital of Malta, where Italian coast guard personnel in white protective suits and masks carried the bodies of some victims from last weekend’s shipwreck down a gang plank onto shore. The corpses were encased in white body bags and were placed in waiting vehicles.
Many of the 28 survivors sat on the deck of the Italian coast guard vessel ferrying the bodies. They were to be taken later to the Sicilian city of Catania.
Many details of the weekend incident remained unclear.
The ill-fated boat, authorities say, set out from Libya, where smuggling rings have thrived in the absence of a functioning government after the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Kadafi. The longtime Libyan strongman had cooperated with Italy in efforts to reduce illicit immigration to Europe.
Throughout the Mediterranean, monitors say, the numbers of migrants lost at sea has been soaring. If the death toll in the latest tragedy is confirmed, that would mean that more than 1,500 people have perished so far this year, noted the International Office for Migration, a Geneva-based intergovernmental group.
Last weekend’s fatal shipwreck comes just a week after about 400 migrants drowned when another wooden fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean, the group noted.
European Union ministers convened in Luxembourg on Monday amid fresh demands that authorities find a new way to approach the migrant crisis and reduce the death toll. Human rights activists have harshly assailed Italy for scaling down its search-and-rescue efforts last year in what was called a budgetary move.
The European Union has also come in for criticism for replacing the Italian operation with a scaled-down patrol mission.
Some argue that bolstered search-and-rescue operations act as a magnet for migrants, giving them confidence that they will be saved and taken to Europe should their craft falter. But others argue that there is no evidence that enhanced rescue efforts provide an incentive for illicit immigration. At any rate, last weekend's mass deaths appear to have produced a consensus that it is time for Europe to come up with a new strategy to patrol its southern flanks.
"The reputation of Europe is at stake," Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said before the Luxembourg meeting. "Europe has to do more. Now, unfortunately, the reality has hit us in the face.”
Among the ideas being considered was the creation of a beefed-up European search-and-rescue effort in the Mediterranean. But it was unclear what concrete new steps might be undertaken.
“The main issue here is to build together a common sense of European responsibility on what is happening in the Mediterranean," Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, told reporters in Luxembourg. "There is no easy solution, no magic solution.”
Kington is a special correspondent.
Follow @mdcneville for news from the Middle East
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times1:44 p.m.: This article has been updated with migrant distress calls, quotes, background, details.
This article was originally posted at 5:36 a.m.
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