EU holds emergency meeting after migrant boat disaster

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[h=4]EU holds emergency meeting after migrant boat disaster[/h]European Union officials were preparing to hold an emergency meeting Monday, after hundreds of people are believed to have died in what could be the Mediterranean's deadliest migrant disaster.

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As news of a boat believed to be crowded with 700 migrants aboard capsizes, Pope Franics and UN officials are asking the international community to step in and help search and rescue efforts. (April 19) AP


Italian Coast Guard officers disembark the body of a dead migrant off the ship Bruno Gregoretti, in Valletta's Grand Harbour, Monday, April 20 2015.(Photo: Lino Azzopardi, AP)


European Union officials were preparing to hold an emergency meeting Monday, after hundreds of people are believed to have died in what could be the Mediterranean's deadliest migrant disaster.
The bodies of 24 people killed when the boat they were traveling from North Africa to Europe in capsized were taken to the island of Malta to be buried Monday, the Associated Press reported. The Maltese Army said they were all adult men.
The exact number of deaths in the shipwreck, which happened around midnight local time Saturday, is not known — the fishing vessel was initially reported to have been carrying 500 to 700 people when it capsized.
A 32-year-old Bangladeshi survivor, who was flown by helicopter to Catania in Sicily on Sunday, said 950 people were aboard the boat, the AP reported. The man was being treated in a hospital.
USA TODAY
Europe grapples with deadly flow of migrants




An Italian Coast Guard vessel was heading toward the island of Sicily on Monday with 28 survivors aboard, the AP reported.
The incident happened about 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, off Libyan waters.
Monday, at least three migrants died after a boat carrying more than 200 people hit a reef at Zephyros beach in Rhodes, Greece, the Greek Reporter said. The publication said a man, a woman and a child died after 200 migrants started swimming to the shore. Authorities said the boat set sail from Turkey, it reported.
Footage posted on YouTube appeared to show rescuers trying to bring the migrants to shore.
European officials are holding an emergency meeting in Luxembourg on Monday following the weekend's tragedy — last week, 400 people were presumed drowned when another boat capsized in the sea, bringing migrant deaths in the Mediterranean so far this year to more than 900, the United Nations said.
Tens of thousands of people are fleeing poverty, war and persecution in Africa, the Middle East and Asia for Europe.
Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that accounts by some survivors indicated that 200 women and 50 children were among those aboard the boat. Some were reportedly locked in the lower deck, he said.
The chaos and violence in Libya have made it an easier port for smugglers to take people across the Mediterranean.
Muscat told BBC radio that solving the crisis in Libya is key to preventing the tragedies.
"We have what is possibly becoming a failed state at our doorstep," he told the broadcaster. "We have criminal gangs having a heyday organizing these trips in rickety boats.
"We need to get the Libyan factions together to form some sort of government of almost national unity."
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told the private Italian radio RTL that he will ask his EU counterparts to confront instability in Libya more decisively than in the past, the AP reported.
"At this moment to intervene with international forces on the ground is a risk that is absolutely excessive," he said. "We cannot think about sending tens of thousands of men without a strategy, on a wave of emotion."
USA TODAY
Voyage across Mediterranean is harrowing and deadly




The EU is facing criticism over the number of deaths — it took over Mediterranean patrols after Italy phased out its so-called Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea") operation in November.
The EU's Triton mission patrol operates only a few miles off Italy's coast, while Mare Nostrum patrols took Italian rescue ships up close to Libya's coast, where most of the smuggling operations originate.
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