PARIS — The bodies of 22 migrants arrived in Sicily on Friday after they were discovered by a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) ship patrolling the central Mediterranean Sea. All but one of the dead were women.
“It is still not entirely clear what happened, but they died a horrible death,” Jens Pagotto, who heads the organization’s mission for search and rescue operations, told Reuters. He said that water and fuel had likely mixed together, generating fumes that “might have been enough for them to lose consciousness.”
The bodies were discovered at the bottom of one of two rubber dinghies floating off the coast of Libya on Wednesday, the MSF said. More than 200 people, including 50 children, were rescued.
The news came amid a reported spike this week in the number of migrants departing North Africa for Europe. Italian authorities have said that smugglers boost their efforts in the warmer weather and calmer waters of summer.
As of Monday, roughly 240,884 migrants have sought to enter Europe by sea this year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Of those, 2,955 deaths have died in transit – compared with 1,906 deaths in the same period last year.
