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Over 240 migrants drowned off Libya claim survivors

03 novembre 2016 | 17.19
LETTURA: 2 minuti

Photo: AFP
Photo: AFP

A total of 249 migrants including women and children died when two rubber dinghies sank off the Libyan coast overnight, survivors told the Italian island of Lampedusa's mayor on Thursday.

The latest tragedies bring to 4,220 the number of people who have perished in the Mediterranean the highest annual death toll on record.

Only two women survived when their boat sank with 138 people on board and one the women lost her two-year-old child, said Lampedusa's mayor Giusi Nicolini.

Twenty-nine people survived the second shipwreck, while 117 died, said Nicolini, who interviewed survivors at Lampedusa's migrant identification centre.

"They told me they had endured every kind of violence, and many are still in shock," Nicolini said.

"They had been held in a warehouse in Libya for nearly two months before they were put onto the boats," she continued.

"One of the boats appeared in very bad condition but the migrants were forced to get into it anyway and set sail, even though some complained."

Nearly 160,000 people have reached Italy so far this year from Libya and one in forty people have died on the perilous sea voyage.

The crossing has become increasingly dangerous as people smugglers use more flimsy inflatable boats in response to European military missions intercepting and destroying their repurposed fishing trawlers.

Most of the people setting sail from Libya this year have fled war and poverty in Nigeria and Sudan, or dictatorships in Eritrea and Gambia. Others are migrant workers who tried to find jobs in Libya but fled after a civil war broke out and the country spiralled into chaos.

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