500 feared lost off Malta after boat rammed and sinks, migrant group says

The migrants reportedly came from the Middle East and northeast Africa. Another boat, with 250 migrants on board, sank off the Libyan coast.

About 500 Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese are feared to have died after their boat was rammed and sank off the Malta coast last week, the International Organization for Migration said Monday.

The group of migrant workers was undertaking a perilous journey from the Egyptian port of Damietta, seeking a better life in Europe, when their boat was overtaken by human traffickers equipped with two vessels on Wednesday, said organization spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume.

According to the organization's interviews with two of the survivors, the human traffickers rammed the boat carrying the migrants with one of their vessels. The two survivors, both Palestinian, said there had been a violent confrontation between the migrants and the traffickers. Berthiaume told The Associated Press the traffickers "used one boat to knock the other" and that there were about nine known survivors in all.

The two Palestinians were rescued by a Panamanian-flagged commercial ship that brought them to Pozzallo, Italy. The other seven survivors were picked up by other boats that brought them to Crete, Greece and Malta.

Berthiaume said another boat carrying at least 250 African migrants to Europe capsized before the leaving the coast near the Libyan capital on Monday, and that most were feared dead. A coast guard spokesman, Qassim Ayoub, told AP that dozens of bodies were being retrieved 11 miles off the coast of Tripoli's Tajoura district and that 36 African migrants, including three women — one of them pregnant — were rescued.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that so far this year 2,200 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean, compared to 700 in all of 2013. However that does not include the two incidents off Malta and Libya, which could put the grim toll close to 3,000. More than 100,000 people have been rescued since January, the UN refugee agency said.

Refugee numbers have swelled as thousands of people flee conflicts in Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East and Africa, many of them boarding unsafe smugglers' boats in Libya. So far, nearly 110,000 people have been rescued since January, the UN refugee agency said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 500 feared lost off Malta after boat rammed and sinks, migrant group says
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0915/500-feared-lost-off-Malta-after-boat-rammed-and-sinks-migrant-group-says
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe