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Scores dead as boats sink off Libya, survivors tell UN | |
(35 minutes later) | |
Scores of people have died after two migrant boats sunk off Libya, according to survivors’ accounts given to the United Nations. | |
Survivors brought ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa told the UN that at least 240 people were missing or dead. | |
Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said 29 people survived the first sinking, reporting that about 120 people were missing. In a separate operation, two women found swimming at sea told rescuers another 120 people had died in the second incident. | |
In both cases, most of the people on board appeared to be from sub-Saharan Africa, but Sami said aid workers were still ascertaining details. | |
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the latest deaths meant 4,220 lives had been lost in the Mediterranean so far this year, compared with 3,777 in the whole of 2015. | |
October saw a surge in arrivals in Italy to 27,388, more than the two previous Octobers combined, and bringing this year’s total to more than 158,000, Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesman, said. | |
The smugglers who arrange the journeys have told migrants and refugees that European training of Libyan coastguards means the rescue missions will soon be handed over to Libya and any rescued migrants will be taken ashore there rather than Italy, Di Giacomo added. | |
That was possibly causing the rush to board boats now, he said, although the information, gleaned from rescued migrants, was not confirmed. | |
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