700 African Migrants Perish In Three Days In Search Of Greener Pastures Abroad, Highest Death Toll In Over A Year And They Keep Coming

More than 700 people are believed to have perished in the Mediterranean last week in what has become the busiest and deadliest crossing of African migrants into Europe in more than a year. The high number of casualties has been linked to three separate incidents that occurred on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

As the Guardian reports, details of the drowning have been slow to emerge because of the confusing nature of the situation. However, the UN refugee agency says the last seven days have witnessed the highest death toll since April 2015, when more than 1,300 people perished in two different incidents around Libya. UN spokesperson Carlotta Sami confirmed this.

“We’re sure about this. We can say that most probably there were more than 700 dead.”

Rescue teams that were still searching for survivors Sunday reported shocking scenes of pulling dead bodies out of the water. Giorgia Linardi, a member of German rescue team Sea Watch, described the horrifying scene.

“It was pretty gruesome…there were already many dead bodies floating in the water. Some of them were between life and death because they weren’t reacting, but still breathing. We found a little kid of a few months. Most of them were young people—we found a dead couple hugging each other.”

Many dead as second African migrant boat overturns off the coast of Libya https://t.co/dxUCKtZL15 pic.twitter.com/mFrS6WvylW

— Ebal’s Blog (@ebalsbblog) May 26, 2016

Despite attempts to crack down on human traffickers ferrying migrants between Libya and Italy via south of the Mediterranean, there are no signs that the massive movement of people will slow down soon. In 2015, 46,000 people traveled the treacherous seas; those numbers have already been topped in the first five months of 2016.

There are no visible signs that Syrians who have been stopped from entering the EU through the Balkans since March have diverted their route through Libya. But last week, 26 Syrian survivors were counted, though they claimed to have been living in Libya for years after escaping their war-torn country. Most of the other survivors are from Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea, and South Sudan, who disclosed that they were fleeing harsh economic conditions and war.

African migrant perishes and others may be missing at sea as boat capsizes https://t.co/kxK5mN1Ou2 pic.twitter.com/MZVxOBpMns

— 4everspain.com (@4everspain) November 20, 2015

The Sea Watch boat managed to attach fluorescent life jackets to dead bodies so that they could be found easily. But they soon ran out of life jackets because there were so many dead bodies.

“It was quite strange because we usually use the life jackets to rescue people… at a point a net was used to extract people and belongings from the water…in the net you had hands, heads and feet coming out.”

The Sea Watch boat was already filled to the brim with 126 people who had been rescued in another incident hours earlier.

Sea Watch is only one of a few organizations in the Mediterranean rescuing migrants from drowning. Linardi disclosed that the chaos and deaths were partially due to Europe failing to authorize a search-and-rescue operation. She said there was no European initiative with a clear mission to search for survivors and rescue people. She pointed out that the EU had set up an anti-smuggling naval mission to curb the activities of traffickers but not necessarily to rescue people in distress on the high sea.

In Greece, migrant numbers have fallen greatly ever since the March EU-Turkey pact. Over 50,000 migrants have been stuck in Greece ever since the closing of the Macedonian border, and reports say that their situation is dire.

In Athens, hordes of asylum seekers have complained about food poisoning. On the Greek islands, over 40 Syrians embarked on a hunger strike because of their detention. In northern Greece, thousands of people were huddled off to military-style camps to meet even worse conditions. The Greece government denies any attempt to deny migrants proper provision and attention, arguing that they were an upgrade from previous conditions.

However, a British activist who was involved with proceedings said, “I visited a lot of the new camps. Some of them are OK, but some are horrific, they’re disused factories, they’re very dirty, there’s flooding and people are getting one portion of food every day, and not three portions.”

What do you think Europe should do about its African and Middle Eastern migration issues?

[Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images]