Survivors tell police in Sicily some 200 migrants were kept inside capsized

Vessels from the Italian and Irish navies and humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) saved about 400 people from the fishing boat, thought to have been carrying up to 600 people, mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war.

MSF said it initially received a call from Rome’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre about a wooden boat in distress at around 9am but was diverted to carry out a rescue of another vessel. The Italian air force were dropping life rafts into the sea, while three ships rushed to the area where the boat went down.

“We try to be a consolation for their stress”, Chiara Montaldo, who coordinates the teams of Doctors Without Borders in Sicily, providing medical and psychological care to migrants rescued from boats in the Mediterranean, said.

The mass drowning follows a string of similar tragedies in the Mediterranean that have already claimed some 2,000 lives this year, according to the global Organization for Migration. “Despite how well we are trained for this particular situation, to deal with circa 700 people in the water at one time, when their vessel sank in less than one minute is an extraordinary challenge”, said Commander Fitzgerald. Those in the hold paid about half as much as those above, they added.

Numerous newcomers look to move swiftly to wealthier northern Europe, including to Britain from Calais, France. “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”.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said there was not likely to be any more information until survivors are interviewed by aid workers and Italian officials on Thursday.

Wednesday’s incident is likely to be the biggest since about 800 immigrants drowned in a single incident off Lampedusa in April.

Rescuers said they feared at least 100 people were trapped below deck when the boat overturned, and would have immediately drowned. Only 28 people survived, including two suspected smugglers.

Almost all of the people crossing the Mediterranean during the first seven months of the year, often in rickety boats and at the mercy of human traffickers, have landed in Greece (124,000) and in Italy (98,000), he said.

Political instability in Libya in the wake of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 2011 ousting has attracted migrants from around Africa and the Middle East to the country, which has a long Mediterranean coastline that is now under-policed.