This year is shaping as the deadliest on record for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe with death estimates put at around 4,000.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported at least 3,800 migrants have died or are missing in the Mediterranean Sea while the International Organisation for Migration puts the figure at 4,200.

More than 200 migrants are believed drowned in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya in recent days.

The UNHCR says that the number of drownings has increased despite a significant drop in migrant crossings compared with 2015, when 3,771 deaths were reported.

The agency said smugglers were now more often using flimsier boats and putting more people aboard them.

The report came as 25 bodies were found in a partially flooded inflatable dinghy off Libya’s coast last week.

More than 100 other migrants were rescued from the boat by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the aid agency said.

The UNHCR says the most dangerous route is between Libya and Italy, with one death in every 47 arrivals recorded.

By comparison, another – much shorter – route from Turkey to Greece had a ratio of 1 in 88.

Fewer migrants were using the latter route after Turkey and the European Union reached a deal on how to tackle the issue earlier this year, the UNHCR said.

It said that the death rate had risen because smugglers were now “often using lower-quality vessels – flimsy inflatable rafts that do not last the journey”.

Nearly 330,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea this year, compared with more than one million in 2015.

Some migrants are seeking economic opportunities in Europe – others are fleeing war, instability or authoritarian governments.

Survivors of one of the recent sinkings were brought ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa, UNHCR spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said.

Many of those killed in the latest two incidents are believed to be migrants from West Africa.

Ms Sami said a dinghy – which was reportedly carrying about 140 people including six children and about 20 women, some of them pregnant – capsized 40km off the Libyan coast. Twenty-nine people were rescued, she said, and 12 bodies were recovered.

In a separate rescue operation, two women found swimming at sea told rescuers that 128 other people had died in their wreck.

Italy has seen an increase in the trafficking of migrants from Libya ever since an EU-Turkey agreement to halt migrants travelling to the Greek Islands came into force in March.

Meanwhile, the Italian Navy is attempting to recover the wreck of a migrant boat that sank off Libya in April last year – leading to the deaths of up to 700 migrants, the largest single loss of life in the Mediterranean in decades.

Only 28 people survived the sinking on the night of April 18 – among them, a-27 year-old Tunisian man who is now faces trial in Italy, accused of being the captain of the migrant boat and part of a network of Libyan smugglers.

Mohammed Ali Malek faces charges of multiple manslaughter, human trafficking and irresponsible sailing of the boat. Prosecutors have asked for an 18-year jail sentence.

But Malek claims he is innocent and just a migrant who paid $US1,600 to get on the boat that would take him to Italy.

Court documents show that all the other survivors – including a Syrian man also under arrest and accused of being second-in-command – told officials that not only was Mohammed Ali Malek captain of the boat, but that his lack of sailing skills had caused the tragic collision with a Portuguese ship that had come to its rescue.

Little is known about the exact circumstances of the accident.

The boat’s journey started, like so many others, on the beaches near Garabulli, in Libya.

The migrants, most of them sub-Saharan Africans fleeing from poverty and conflict in their home countries and further violence in Libya, were being held at an illegal centre near the coast.

From there they were taken in small groups by dinghy to a wooden fishing boat anchored off the coast, where they amassed on the deck and inside the hull.

The 27m-long boat, carrying more than 800 migrants, set off at dawn on April 18.

According to the survivors, it quickly became evident the captain had little experience commanding a boat. They claim he did not know how to read a compass and that he asked for help from the
migrants huddled on the deck.

The boat continued its journey for several hours – and by mid-afternoon, the captain of the boat did what is now the regular procedure for migrant boats making the long crossing. He placed a distress call with the Italian coast guard in Rome and asked for rescue.

The Portuguese container ship King Jacob was sailing nearby and asked to respond to the distress call.

After two hours, the King Jacob’s radar detected the presence of a vessel in its vicinity. But it was so small, and it was so dark, that it was impossible to see anything with the naked eye.

The King Jacob’s captain told Italian investigators that he steered the King Jacob to avoid collision, but that whoever was sailing the migrant boat continued to do so erratically, as if trying to “follow” the King Jacob’s sudden change of route.

He then insists that he ordered his crew to switch off the King Jacob’s engines to avoid a collision.

The fishing boat started to sail at slow speed towards the King Jacob – but then it suddenly increased its pace.

The small vessel’s bow rammed the King Jacob’s port side, and then its starboard side scratched against the huge merchant ship.

The fishing boat manoeuvred as if sailing backwards – but started to lose balance possibly because of the agitation among the panicked migrants who could see what was happening.

It started to capsize, and in less than five minutes the fishing boat had sunk with the loss of 700 lives.

Laurie Nowell
AMES Australia Senior Journalist