The Mediterranean Sea, which is the world's most dangerous border area for those trying to flee from poverty and violence at home from the areas of Africa and the Middle East, claimed more than 200 lives in the latest migrant exodus, Wednesday.
According to reports from Reuters, a fishing boat presumed to be carrying around 600 migrants mostly Syrians escaping from the Syrian civil war, capsized in the Mediterranean Sea area. The figure was variable as accounts from survivors are still being gathered.
Vessels from the Irish and Italian Navies and Medicins sans Frontiers (MSF), a humanitarian agency rushed to the scene and rescued more than 370 people according to the Italian Coast Guard.
The responders retrieved 25 bodies but found no more remains after searching the waters overnight. A spokesman from the coastguard said that Italian vessels continued to hunt within the area on Thursday.
A Reuters photographer who was aboard Phoenix, a privately funded vessel run by MSF and the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, stated that there were calm seas and perfect conditions to pursue the sea crossing. The Phoenix responded to a distress call for a boat transporting about 500 persons.
The Italian Navy disclosed that it was giving out life jackets to "numerous" migrants on yet another different boat.
Wednesday's Mediterranean Sea tragedy happened when the boat tipped over to one side upon seeing an Irish rescue craft approached. The passengers were apparently distressed upon spotting LE Niamh, which was supposed to be rescuing them in relation to their illegal travel, that they rushed to one side of the fishing boat.
Irish Defence Minister Simon Coveney stated on RTE, an Irish state radio on Thursday: "What happened here was because the boat was so overloaded, and the conditions were such that the boat started taking on water and it listed to one side, capsized and sank, all in the space of two minutes."
Minister Coveney also praised its Irish navy patrol ship LE Niamh, for their professionalism in the occurrence of a "very traumatic and difficult rescue" of an estimated 400 migrants. Mr. Coveney continued that the ship carried 25 bodies including four children and 367 survivors, and was due to arrive about 3 p.m. at the port on Thursday, as per The Irish Times.
The Irish ship is a member of the European Union Triton mission, which was widened after around 800 migrants lost their lives at sea in an April shipwreck.
In that April tragedy, Boston Herald.com revealed that Sicilian prosecutors disclosed that smugglers frequently pack unseaworthy boats way below its usual passenger capacity, with hundreds of migrants situated below deck. Italian Navy divers established that those migrants were cornered inside the boat when it overturned. As the investigators have determined, the boat capsized when a container ship made its way to rescue the migrants, because they panicked and rushed to one side of the boat causing it to list and turned over
Smugglers of people, mostly from Libra charged thousands of dollars for access to the sea, have shipped more than 90,000 migrants to Italy, an estimate for this year, as detailed by the International Organization for Migration. In 2014, Italy admitted 170,000 to their land.
