GENEVA, Switzerland, Sept. 15 (UPI) —
About 500 migrants from Egypt to Malta are believed to have drowned after their boat was deliberately sunk, an international migration group said Monday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Geneva, Switzerland-based group with 156 member nations, said midway through a voyage, beginning Sept. 6 in Damietta, Egypt, the smugglers who organized the trip, traveling in a separate boat, ordered the migrants to board a different, and apparently less seaworthy, vessel. The migrants refused.
"The survivors said the traffickers became so enraged after the migrants refused to board the replacement craft. They say there was an argument, a fight, and that the smugglers used their boat to sink the one the migrants were on. It seems they intentionally rammed the ship," said Leonard Doyle, an IOM spokesman.
Doyle’s interpretation of the incident is based on testimony from two of the seven survivors.
Earlier Monday, a migrant boat carrying about 250 people from Libya capsized near the port city of Tripoli. The Libyan Navy reported 36 people were rescued, and the rest are feared dead.
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