The final toll of dead and missing from two refugee shipwrecks off Libya at the weekend has risen to 245, the United Nations high commission for refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.
The revised estimate is partly based on horrific accounts from hospitalised survivors, and raises the death toll in the two incidents by about 50 additional migrants.
The revised tallies suggested that 82 went missing after a shipwreck on Friday night and a further 163 are feared dead in an incident off the Libyan coast on Sunday. The International Medical Corps said a woman and six men were rescued by the Libyan coast guards in the second incident. The new figures were given by the UNHCR at a briefing in Geneva.
The increased death toll is due to the greater use of small, plastic boats and the violence of the people smugglers.
Survivors of one wreck recovering in hospital in Pozzallo in Sicily told the authorities that 140 people had been pushed from one boat on to a rubber dinghy not capable of taking more than 30. It then capsized. The dinghy had no distress signalling equipment, and its surviving occupants were rescued by a Danish cargo ship. As many as five children had died.
Filippo Grandi, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, said said that he was “profoundly shocked by the violence used by some smugglers, including the merciless killing of young man a few days ago which was reported to my teams by survivors.