Rome: More than 200 migrants are missing after their overcrowded dinghies sank in the Mediterranean, international agencies said on Wednesday, warning that the final toll from the latest boat tragedy could be much higher.
Nine survivors were rescued by the coastguard and taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa, out of more than 200 who had left Libya on Saturday piled into rubber dinghies, the International Organisation for Migration said.
“Nine were saved after four days at sea. The other 203 were swallowed by the waves,” the UN refugee agency spokeswoman in Italy, Carlotta Sami, said on Twitter.
Several thousand have died trying to make the perilous crossing from north Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean in 2014 alone.
The IOM said the surviving migrants from the latest disaster spoke French, so probably came from West African nations such as Ivory Coast and Senegal.
“Because of bad weather, the two dinghies collapsed and the people fell into the sea. Many drowned,” IOM spokesman in Italy Flavio Di Giacomo said.
The organisation’s spokesman in Geneva Joel Millman said the information was coming in about other stricken boats and warned that the overall toll “could easily triple by the end of the day”.
