Over 500 people are missing and presumed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after the overcrowded fishing boat from Tobruk, Libya, capsized, spilling 800 people into the sea.
Perhaps you missed this story as a submersible ship filled with billionaires is stuck at the wreckage of the Titanic two miles below the surface. Both instances are tragic stories, but American media is fixated on the story of the stranded billionaires.
According to Pakistani officials, the 82-foot fishing trawler left Egypt for Libya, where more passengers were stuffed into the trawler. Eight hundred people paid smugglers $4500 each; the passengers were Egyptians, Syrians, and Pakistani nationals.
Nine Egyptians were arrested and charged with "manslaughter, setting up a criminal organization, migrant smuggling, and causing a shipwreck."
Survivors told of treading water for hours surrounded by hundreds of children's-floating bodies before being rescued.
The Guardian reports on the second-largest migrant disaster in the Mediterranean Sea that Greek accounts of the tragedy have been contradicted by data tracking proving that the ship was not moving when it capsized despite what the Hellenic coast guard said—many questions on why the Greece ships did not remove at least some passengers to stabilize the trawler as it was rocking in choppy seas while stationary.
Tracking data suggests an overcrowded fishing boat that sank off the Greek coast last week with the feared loss of hundreds of lives had not moved for several hours before it capsized, contradicting accounts from the Hellenic coastguard.
As Pakistani police said on Monday they believed up to 800 people were onboard, a Guardian analysis of ship movements supplied by the MariTrace service indicated two vessels – the Lucky Sailor and the Faithful Warrior – stood by or circled round the stationary trawler for at least four hours.
The coastguard has said it was in contact with the boat throughout that period – from about 3pm to 7pm on Tuesday – by radio, satphone and helicopter and that the vessel was not in difficulty, but moving “at a steady course and speed” towards Italy.
The trawler began rocking, then listed and sank in international waters off the west coast of Greece shortly after 2am on Wednesday. Authorities have said 104 people were rescued and 78 bodies recovered. A search and rescue operation continues.
Horrific conditions on the boat.
A Greek social worker, who looked after some of the survivors, told us she had heard that water ran out on the boat days before it sank, forcing passengers to drink their own urine and suck water from the melting refrigerators.
Many of them are suffering severe mental trauma.
She recalled one survivor who told her that "for two hours he was swimming surrounded by the bodies of children" and a young man in his 20s who "wanted to commit suicide, wanted to jump into the sea and kill himself because he couldn't take it anymore".
The survivors have been moved to an immigration centre in central Greece.
The migrants and refugees who attempt to cross the Mediterranean every year leave their homes predominantly across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia for a myriad of reasons.
Some are driven by economic motivations, whereas others are compelled to leave by war and oppression. In Europe, where the issue has become highly politicized, the distinction between “economic migrant” and “refugee” is often an important point of debate.
The cause of the initial migrant crisis in 2015 was largely attributed to a number of interconnected conflicts; chiefly, the Libyan Civil War, the Syrian Civil War, and the Iraq War of 2014-2017. However, a broad range of other social, economic, and political reasons have been explored for the consistently high numbers of migrants and refugees who have attempted to cross the Mediterranean since the period of “crisis” started and ended between 2015 and 2016.