Nearly 150 Migrants Feared Dead After Boat Sinks In Mediterranean

MEP: A rubber boat packed with refugees has sank in the Mediterranean, with the presumed sole survivor saying that he believes all other passengers drowned.

A humanitarian vessel, the Iuventa, found the boy hanging onto a fuel tank in the sea on Tuesday. He was transferred first to an Italian Coast Guard ship, then to a Spanish frigate and brought to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa early on Wednesday.

“He said that everyone else died. But there’s some hope that the Italian Coast Guard picked up others,” said the International Migration Organization (IOM) spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo in Rome, after speaking to staff in Lampedusa. It should become clear on Thursday whether others survived, as a Coast Guard vessel disembarks migrants in eastern Sicily that day, he said.

“The boy said they left Sabratha, Libya, a couple days ago on a rubber boat with 147 sub-Saharan Africans on board, including five children and some pregnant women,” Di Giacomo said.

Many refugees have dared the risky journey through the Central Mediterranean from Libya to Italy over the past months. Smugglers have also benefited from the chaos and lawlessness in Libya to dispatch more people on board unsafe dinghies.