300 more dead, has Europe failed Lampedusa migrants?

The rubber dinghies, each carrying about 100 people, are missing, according to interviews with survivors from two of the boats on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The flotilla of boats left a beach near Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, Federico Fossi from the UNHCR in Italy, told Channel 4 News.

New details about tragedy in the #Mediterranean: 4 rubber dinghies. Tagged from 1 to 4. One is missing. At least 300 hundred have died.

— Carlotta Sami (@CarlottaSami) February 11, 2015

An Italian tug boat rescued nine people who had been on two of the boats on Monday, and brought them to the Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday morning.

They are the only known survivors from their boats, leaving more than 200 unaccounted for, they told representatives of the UNHCR. Another boat, carrying an estimated 100 migrants, is missing survivors said.

The Italian coast guard said it picked up 105 people on Sunday, from one of the four boats. The sea conditions were extreme, with waves as high as 8 metres and temperatures just a few degrees above zero. Twenty-nine died of hypothermia in the 18 hours it took the coast guard to ferry them to Italy.

The survivors rescued on Monday were from the Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea, Gambia and Niger, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said.

Anarchy in Libya has made it the main departure point for people making the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to enter the European Union through Italy.

Operation Triton

The recent deaths at sea have reignited criticism of Italy’s decision last year to end a full-scale search-and-rescue mission, known as Mare Nostrum, due to concerns over costs.

It was replaced by an EU border-control mission called Triton that employs fewer ships than Mare Nostrum did, and has a much smaller area of operation.

Carlotta Sami, the spokeswoman for the UNHCR said: “What we have from the EU is not a response to the crisis, to the level, the scale of the crisis we have to face. And it’s quite surprising to us that the EU cannot respond with a stronger solidarity, with a stronger humanity and with a stronger strategy to that.”

Counting the more than 300 estimated to have been in the three missing boats, almost 30 times as many have died since the start of 2015 versus the same period of last year, when the Mare Nostrum mission was still in place.