Fifty migrants missing over boat sinks off Libyan coast

Croatian navy vessel SB72 Andrija Mohorovicic – which is part of the EU’s Triton patrol and rescue operation in the Mediterranean – rushed to the boat’s aid, coastguards said.

The Italian coastguard said that overall on Tuesday, it had coordinated the rescue of more than 1,500 migrants – many fleeing war zones and poverty in Africa and the Middle East – from seven different vessels.

In a separate operation, the naval crew took on board another 375 people from Italian vessel the Mimbelli.

When water started flooding the hold and people tried to get on deck, smugglers “armed with knives blocked their escape”, the IOM said. A spokeswoman for the coast guard said the rescued migrants were taken to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

So far, Reggio Calabria has embraced almost 12 thousand migrants this year.

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.

Italy’s interior ministry estimates more than 100,000 migrants and refugees have attempted to reach its shores so far this year. But the incident Wednesday night time is the believed to be the deadliest to date; 400 of the 600 passengers have been rescued and 25 our bodies have been recovered, however the the rest are feared lifeless.