Dying of exposure

More than 70 people were feared to have died in the sea south of Malta in one of the worst disasters involving clandestine migrants in the Mediterranean, John Hooper writes in The Guardian:

Reports of the tragedy emerged the day after similar calamity off Spain, and brought to 100 the number believed to have perished in the Mediterranean this week. The deaths came amid a steep increase in the number of landings on Europe's southern shores. Police on Malta said eight survivors from a half-sunken dinghy had told them that the boat on which they were trying to reach Europe had set off from Libya with 79 people aboard. They said the migrants had told a horrific tale of hunger and sudden death.

Two days after leaving the port of Zuwara, Libya, their food and water had run out, and the boat's outboard engine had been torn off. They spent the next seven days adrift in heavy seas as their numbers gradually dwindled. Some of those aboard died of exposure. Others were swept away by waves breaking over the fragile vessel.

Those who made it to Malta were quoted as saying that most of the would-be migrants who boarded the vessel in Libya had been Sudanese and Eritreans. They were said to have included a child and eight women, four of them pregnant. Sea conditions in the area where the craft was found, 40 nautical miles south of Malta, were reported to be very rough.

The survivors were rescued from their waterlogged boat by the crew of a Maltese fishing vessel. From there, they were transferred to a Maltese naval ship taking part in patrols organised by the EU's Frontex agency, according to a report from the Maltese capital, Valletta. The earliest accounts referred to 10 dead. But after police questioned the survivors with the help of an interpreter, they said 71 people were believed to be missing...