Mediterranean migrant crossings top 60,000 this year: UN

Geneva, May 30 (IANS/AKI) More than 60,000 boat migrants have crossed from North Africa to Italy this year, including 9,500 in the past week alone, while over 1,720 people have perished in the Mediterranean since January, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.

Migrant crossings have surged with the warmer weather and some 50 corpses have been brought ashore at Italian ports in the last few days after "an undetermined number of incidents, in which dozens of others are feared dead or missing at sea", the UNHCR said.

Some 33 people lost their lives including 13 women and 7 children in a particularly deadly shipwreck on May 24 with dozens of others feared missing after a packed three-storey boat listed when migrants panicked and began taking on water, said UNHCR.

A total of 593 survivors from the shipwreck reached the southern Italian port of Crotone on Saturday, most of whom were from Sudan, Eritrea, the Comoro Islands, Egypt and Morocco, according to UNHCR.

The migrants who have arrived in various Italian ports over the last seven days - including many hundreds of shipwreck survivors - are receiving assistance that includes counselling for psychological trauma, UNHCR stated.

Some of the migrants who landed on the tiny southwest Italian island of Lampedusa at the weekend had gunshot wounds, UNHCR said.

"One man told our staff that he was shot in the leg by members of Libyan militias who also stole his belongings," UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva.

"Another man was shot in the arm and tortured by a trafficker to extract money from him.

"Many survivors also reported having witnessed friends being fired at or killed while in Libya," added Baloch.

UNHCR said it has also received "deeply worrying" reports of incidents at sea during crossings such as robbery by armed criminal gangs who approached migrant boats and intimidated passengers, stealing their belongings and even their boat's engine.

It praised the Italian Coastguard for coordinating rescue operations, as well as the Tunisian Coastguard, navy and merchant ships and other vessels which have saved migrants in the Mediterranean.

But the agency urged governments to offer migrants and refugees "accessible and safe ways to reach Europe" such as family reunification, resettlement and private sponsorship.

"Saving lives remains the top priority," UNHCR said.

--IANS/AKI

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