700 African Migrants Feared Drowned in 2 Shipwrecks — Migrants Were Trying To Reach Europe

By John Heilprin
This year is on track to become the deadliest ever for migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea after two heavily loaded boats were wrecked in the past week, possibly killing 700 people fleeing Africa for Europe — the same number as died during all of last year.

That would raise the total number of migrants killed on the sea in 2014 to about 2,900, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration and other officials.

More than 20,000 people have died in the past two decades trying to reach the Italian coast, including 2,300 in 2011 and around 700 in 2013. The migration organization says the steep death toll reflects turmoil in Libya, Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East and Africa. To escape those conflicts, many people are willing to board unsafe smugglers' boats.

About 500 Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese are feared dead after their boat was rammed and sunk off the Malta coast last week, the IOM, an inter-governmental organization with 156 member countries, said Monday. Another 200 are feared dead in the wreck of a second boat that was carrying at least 250 African migrants to Europe when it capsized off the Libyan coast.

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