As many as 500 migrants are thought to have been killed off the coast of Malta, after their boat was rammed by traffickers last week, said the International Organisation for Migration on Monday.
IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said,
“Survivors have testified that the traffickers arrived aboard two boats and ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the sea. The migrants said it was too dangerous and refused. There was a violent altercation and the traffickers used their boat to ram the migrants' boat.”
"Some 500 people were on board - Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese. They were trying to reach Europe."
News of the incident comes after a boat carrying approximately 250 migrants sank off the Libyan coast on Sunday, killing at least 100 people.
Commenting on the deaths, Amnesty International’s Europe and central Asia director John Dalhuisen said,
“The response of EU member states to the refugee crises in the Middle East and north Africa has been shameful."
“The increasing death toll in the Mediterranean Sea highlights the ineffectiveness of the EU’s current asylum and migration policies and practices.”