POLITICIANS across the globe called on the EU yesterday to increase its search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean after a ship taking hundreds of migrants to Italy capsized.

Emergency services mounted a major search operation north of Libya and, as rescue attempts gathered speed, sources said that an estimated 700 people had been aboard but only 28 people had been rescued so far.

United Nations refugee agency spokeswoman Barbara Molinario said that the Italian coastguard operation was continuing and that the number of victims was not known.

“It’s clear that a boat overturned and there are people missing, but on numbers dead or alive it’s too soon to tell,” she said.

As in previous such accidents, the ship is believed to have overturned when migrants moved to one side of the overcrowded boat when a merchant ship approached.

A wave of migrants has recently tried to leave Libya, seeking to take advantage of calmer seas and warm weather to make the dangerous crossing on smugglers’ boats.

At least 1,500 have died trying this year as the overcrowded boats capsize.

Just last week, 400 people were presumed drowned when another boat overturned.

Italy said it would continue to rescue migrants but demanded that the European Union increased assistance to rescue and shelter them.

EU border control agency Frontex must take a greater role in co-ordinating rescue operations, Rome said, but Frontex is technically a border patrol operation and not responsible for search and rescue.

European commissioner for migration Dmitris Avramopoulos said that a new policy would be presented in May.
He has urged other EU members to provide more aid to Italy.

International aid groups and Italian authorities have criticised Europe’s Triton border protection operation as inadequate to tackle the scale of the problem.

It has a much smaller budget and narrow remit than the more comprehensive Italian search-and-rescue mission which it replaced.

Britain’s Labour shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the tragedy showed “how urgently we need EU and international action.

“The British government must immediately reverse its opposition to EU search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean, as the EU needs to restart the rescue as soon as possible.

“Home Secretary Theresa May was very wrong to argue that the EU rescue operations should be stopped in order to deter others from coming. It is immoral to turn our backs and leave people to drown in order to deter other desperate travellers and of course it hasn’t worked. Since the operations were cancelled even more people have tried to cross the Mediterranean, and thousands have died.”

Italy scaled back the mission after it was unable to persuade its European partners to help meet operating costs of €9 million (£6.5m) per month.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said: “A tragedy is unfolding in the Mediterranean.

“If the EU and the world continue to close their eyes, it will be judged in the harshest terms.”

by Our Foreign Desk