Italy has been seeing a record wave of migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean from African coasts, and especially from Libya, since the beginning of the summer.
The Refugee Council says the huge numbers of migrants dying while fleeing their countries, reinforces the need for New Zealand to take in more refugees.
“We expect that this is the trace that will lead us to the perpetrators”, Doskozil said, making clear that the people being held were not the ringleaders of the trafficking gang.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw workers removing bodies from the water, and pulling a flooded boat into the harbor that contained several drowned victims floating face down.
A Bangladeshi diplomat said at least five of his country’s nationals, including a six-month-old baby, were among the dead. Owing to the breakdown of the Libyan state and reticence from the Tunisian government they sometimes go undocumented. Panic followed as some people fell into the sea and two men jumped into to rescue them.
It has always been a transit point for migrants seeking to reach Malta, Italy, and other European countries due to its proximity and loose border control. Fishermen and the coast guard found the waterlogged vessel at sea and towed it back to Zuwara, where they had to break the ship’s deck to reach people trapped inside.
More than 300,000 people have sought to cross the Mediterranean Sea so far in 2015, up from 219,000 in all of past year, as European authorities grapple with the largest influx of people since the Second World War.
The deaths near Libya came shortly after the discovery of a truck parked on a motorway in Austria containing the remains of 71 refugees who had suffocated inside. Police raided houses and questioned nearly 20 others in the case. “One is basically at a loss for words in view of the extent of suffering there”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said of the Austrian deaths.
“While Europe is squabbling, people are dying”, Alexander Betts, a professor and director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University, told the New York Times.
“The IS message is simple – do business with us or die”.
Hungarian police arrested a fifth suspect, a Bulgarian citizen, in connection with the deaths. They included 16 Romanians, two Syrians, two Hungarians and a Russian citizen. “We have been forced into this route”, said Ayman Talaal, a Syrian survivor, standing next to his daughter. Dozens of Zuwara residents protested the smuggling this week, holding signs with pictures of corpses and slogans that read “Illegal immigration is mass murder”. A further 450 people on board were rescued.
He said 100 were rescued, including nine women and two girls.
The migrants on board had been from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco and Bangladesh, the security official said.
Alarmed by the growing humanitarian disaster, the UN chief urged countries “in Europe and elsewhere to prove their compassion and do much more to bring an end to the crisis“.
Hussein Asheini of Libya’s Red Crescent, said at least 105 bodies had been recovered, adding: “a coast guard team is still diving in and checking inside to see if there’s anyone else”.
The Malta-based non-profit group Migrant Report had earlier said young children, aged 1 to 3, were among the dead.