Reports said about one hundred and seventy people are feared to have died in two separate Mediterranean shipwrecks.
The Italian navy reports that a ship sank off the coast of Libya with one hundred and seventeen people on board, while Moroccan and Spanish authorities have tried to find a lost boat in the western Mediterranean.
Three people suffering severe hypothermia were pulled from the waters by a helicopter, and are being treated on the island of Lampedusa.
While UN refugee high commissioner, Filippo Grandi said in a press release that they cannot turn a blind eye to the high numbers of people dying on Europe’s doorstep, Italy’s populist deputy PM Matteo Salvini wrote on Facebook after the sinking that as long as European ports remain open, unfortunately the smugglers will continue to do business and kill.
The UN’s refugee agency could not independently verify the death tolls. It would be recalled that more than two thousand, two hundred people lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2018.
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