Italian police: Migrant survivors say 200 died in shipwreck

She was being treated in a hospital accompanied by three family members. One was a man with a fractured leg; the other was a mother, with 1-year-old son, who needed dialysis.

Knife-wielding traffickers sealed migrants into the hull of a boat which sank off Libya, condemning them to drown after slashing or thrashing them depending on their ethnicity, according to survivor testimony reported Friday.

However, the exact number of the people on board is still unclear. These people would have had nearly no chance to escape, experts said.

The Italian navy said it was handing out life preservers to “numerous” migrants on yet another boat.

An Irish navy ship was the first at the scene and pulled hundreds of the migrants from the water. Nearby, three children, still wearing the plastic shoes handed out as they got off the boat on Thursday, play a game of table football with a volunteer.

Overloaded boats carrying migrants often turn over due to sudden movements by the desperate passengers when they spot rescuers arriving.

Irish navy Cmdr. Brian Fitzgerald told journalists Thursday that about 200 people are feared dead.

Police said the five suspected smugglers – Libyan and Algerian men – were detained Thursday in Palermo as they disembarked, along with 362 survivors, from an Irish naval vessel.

The migrants are likely to be assessed and interviewed before heading into a reception centre. “The creation of safe and legal ways for people to seek asylum or migrate to Europe”. That rescue operation was complete at 12.30pm.

A smuggler nicknamed Az’zubair confirmed by phone from Zuwara that a wooden boat with around 600 people left from Zuwara approximately two days ago, but was unable to confirm it was the vessel that capsized.

More than 200,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to get to Europe this summer, and even those who have survived shipwrecks say the chance to emigrate is worth the risk.

“The fact that we were first called to assist this boat and then shortly afterwards sent to another one highlights the severe lack of resources available for rescue operations”, Matias said.

But an emergency worker in Malta who helped in the rescue effort tells the BBC, “I think it’s unlikely that any additional survivors will be picked up”.

“We will never know how many people were devoured by the Mediterranean Sea this afternoon”, the Twitter account MSF_Sea wrote Wednesday.

Wednesday’s disaster was the worst in the Mediterranean since 800 migrants were feared drowned off Libya in April.

On the patio, two veiled women are hugged in turn by psychologist Anna Cullotta, who has experience in helping migrant survivors. More than 2,100 are estimated to have died or gone missing while trying to reach Europe, not including those who died on Wednesday.