Hundreds feared dead in migrant shipwreck off Libya

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/20/hundreds-feared-dead-in-migrant-shipwreck-off-libya
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Hundreds of people are feared to have drowned in the southern Mediterranean last week, in what would be the deadliest migrant shipwreck in months.

A repurposed fishing boat overloaded by smugglers with p to 500 Africans hoping to reach Italy from eastern Libya may have sunk, survivors told the UN refugee agency.

A death toll of just half the size would bring the total number of mortalities in the Mediterranean in 2016 to over 1,000 – more than a quarter of last year’s record tally.

The disaster reportedly happened several miles out to sea, after the smugglers tried to transfer a group of migrants from a smaller to a larger boat, survivors said. The larger boat was already overburdened, and began to sink under the strain of extra passengers. “Due to the overcrowding, the large boat sank,” UNHCR said in a statement.

A Somali community leader in Egypt said that some of the dead appeared to have been part of Egypt’s Somali expatriate community. “Families in Egypt are weeping for their children who drowned in the sea,” he said. “I keep seeing pictures of the people who drowned on social media. Some of them were my students.”

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