Sea tragedy: UN says up to 500 migrants may have drowned on their way to Italy

As many as 500 migrants seeking a better future in Europe may have drowned last week in the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy, UN refugee officials said Wednesday.

If confirmed, the toll would make the incident one of the worst tragedies involving refugees and migrants over the past year.

On Tuesday, a team from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spoke with some of the 41 survivors of the alleged accident who had arrived at Kalamata, a town on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula, the U.N. agency said in a statement.

“If confirmed, as many as 500 people may have lost their lives when a large ship went down in the Mediterranean Sea at an unknown location between Libya and Italy,” the agency said.

One of the survivors, an Ethiopian man named Mohamed who was travelling with his family, told the International Organisation for Migration: “I saw my wife and my two-month-old child die at sea, together with my brother-in-law ... The boat was going down ... down ... All the people died in a matter of minutes.”

The survivors “drifted at sea for a few days without food, without anything,” Mohamed said, adding that he thought “I was going to die.” He said the travellers had intended to go to Italy, not Greece.

“The testimonies we gathered are heartbreaking,” IOM Athens Chief of Mission Daniel Esdras said in the statement. “We await further investigations by authorities to better understand what actually happened and find hopefully evidence against criminal smugglers.”