– ‘Limited resources’ –
So far this year, over 2,300 men, women and children have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean to the EU after rickety and overcrowded boats operated by often unscrupulous people-smugglers capsized.
A Libyan coast guard official told AFP Thursday that “dozens” were still missing from the latest boat to sink off the western port of Zuwara, and that the search would be “intensified” on Friday morning.
“We are working with very limited resources. Most of the boats we use are fishing boats that we borrow from their owners,” he said.
The Italian coast guard said it had rescued around 1,400 people off the coast of Libya on Thursday, a day after it pulled another 3,000 to safety from the same area.
Swedish officials said the Poseidon docking in Palermo had rescued 130 people Wednesday from a rubber dinghy and another 442 from a wooden boat found drifting off Libya that also contained 52 cadavers.
But what happened in Austria has brought home that even if they make it across the Mediterranean, the migrants’ troubles are far from over, with many forced to put their fate in the hands of profit hungry people smugglers.
The lorry had Hungarian number plates, meaning that the migrants were highly likely among the more than 100,000 people to have trekked up through the western Balkans into EU member Hungary this year.
From Hungary, which is laying a barbed-wire barrier along its border with Serbia to be followed by a four metre (13 foot) high fence, many migrants try to make it — via Austria — to places like Germany and Sweden.
“We passed by sea. And the sea was just a game playing with our lives,” said Lashkari, a 30 year old Afghan picked up by Hungarian border police on Thursday night after travelling for 30 days.
“I dont think we’ve reached our final destination yet, because after now we don’t know where do we go,” he told AFP.
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