Italian navy saves 550 refugees as smugglers' trawler capsizes in Med

Praise for sailors’ swift action as dramatic photographs show overloaded boat turning over as naval vessel approaches.  

Survivors of previous disasters have described how it is virtually impossible for people to escape if they are below deck when their vessel sinks.

Ibrahim Mbalo, a Gambian who was one of just 28 survivors when a shipwreck claimed the lives of around 800 people last April, has described how passengers pull each other down when the water rushes below decks, since many cannot swim and need something to hold onto in order to stay buoyant.

“Someone grabbed my trousers because they couldn’t swim, so I had to remove my trousers [to get free],” said Mbalo. “I was underwater for three or four minutes.”

The boat is the latest of at least 38 smuggling vessels to be rescued in the southern Mediterranean since the start of the week. More than 6,000 lives have been saved since Monday, 11,000 since the start of the month, and 39,000 since the start of the year, according to the IOM.

This puts the rate of arrivals to Italy at roughly the same level as last year, when 39,000 had arrived by 26 May, and 47,000 by the end of the month. While the fragile EU-Turkey deportation deal has – for now – drastically reduced migration numbers to Greece, this has not yet sparked an increase in people trying to reach Europe via Libya and Italy.

The nationalities of this week’s arrivals is not yet known, but since January Syrians have not constituted a meaningful proportion of those reaching Italian shores. The majority of people travelling to Italy are from sub-Saharan Africa – with wars and poverty in Nigeria and Somalia, and repressive regimes in Gambia and Eritrea, proving the biggest “push factors” along this route.