180 missing in migrant boat disaster

Humanitarian workers from International Organisation for Migration and the UN refugee agency, recounted harrowing details of the latest major tragedy in waters off Libya after talking to four rescued passengers, two Eritreans and two Ethiopians, who arrived on Monday evening in the Sicilian port of Trapani.

The survivors, three men and one woman, were described as “traumatised and exhausted”. They said their two-tier, wooden boat had left Libya on Friday with more 180 people packed on board, all of them originally from East Africa. After five hours at sea, the engine cut out and the boat started to take on water.