Brussels, 17/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 16 September, the International Organisation for Migration (OIM) said that it had received evidence to confirm the witness statements of two Palestinian survivors who had alerted the authorities to the shipwreck of more than 500 people off the coast of Malta. Having launched an investigation into these events, the OIM has obtained “eyewitness testimony of a tragic incident in which as many as 500 migrants were drowned when their vessel was deliberately sunk in the Mediterranean”, according to a press release. These statements confirm the growing death toll off the coasts of Europe, which is already approaching 3,000 this year. This is nearly four times higher than the 2013 figure, the OIM adds.
OIM staff and the Italian police questioned the two survivors who washed up in the Sicilian town of Pollazzo. “Both are Palestinian men from Gaza who were rescued separately after days in the water clinging to flotation devices. They told investigators that their overcrowded vessel was sent to the bottom by enraged smugglers when demands that they move to a less seaworthy vessel were rejected by the migrants”. On Tuesday 16 September, the Italian, Maltese and Greek authorities confirmed to OIM personnel that ten migrants had been rescued from the shipwrecked vessel. Furthermore, three bodies were retrieved from the wreckage. According to the two Palestinian survivors, those on board were Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese. Other survivors of the tragedy brought ashore on Crete confirmed that there were around 500 migrants on the vessel when it sank, the Organisation continues. (SP)