The Italian Coast Guard was searching by sea and from the air on Thursday for dozens of people missing when a boat capsized and partially sank earlier this week in the perilous central Mediterranean, 195 kilometers (120 miles) off the Calabrian coast, officials said.
The partially submerged boat was still in view, but the commander of the search operation said no bodies were in sight.
A fishing boat was the first to respond on Monday after the boat capsized and rescued 11 people, one of whom later died. Six bodies have also been recovered, and survivors say some 60 more are missing.
Survivors reported that the boat motor had caught fire, causing it to capsize off the Italian coast some eight days after departing from Turkey with about 75 people from Iran, Syria and Iraq on board, according to the U.N. refugee agency and other U.N. organizations. They included more than 20 children.
A spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders said the survivors have suffered both psychological and physical trauma, and “remained very confused.”
“They have been hospitalized ... and don’t yet know who in their families is alive and who died at sea,’’ said Cecilia Momi, in charge of the group's humanitarian affairs. “Entire families are destroyed. Some lost a wife, some lost a child, a husband, a friend, a nephew.”
In another incident Monday, the charity rescue ship Nadir rescued 51 people from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh and transported them to Lampedusa. Another 10 people on the same smugglers boat were found suffocated to death on the lower deck.
The deaths bring to over 800 people who have died or went missing and are presumed dead crossing the central Mediterranean so far this year, an average of five dead a day, the U.N. agencies said.
The International Red Cross said that the incidents are "another testament to Europe's failing approach to migration and asylum, which prioritizes walls and deterrence over humane welcome.''
