Group members ：沈莉 蒋燕News sources ： BBC BuzzFeed The Huffington Post

The Number Of Migrants Dying Crossing The Mediterranean This Year Is Mind-Boggling

• Last year was a record year – almost 220,000 migrants crossed the water, and over 3,500 died during their journey, according to the U.N. Over 30,000 have already made the crossing so far this year.

• More than 1,700 people are believed to have died this year so far, compared with 96 deaths up to the end of April last year. As many as 800 migrants are feared drowned after the boat they were travelling in capsized in Libyan waters south of the Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday.

（地中海）

（令人难以置信的）

A big reason people are fleeing is that conflicts at home are either not going away or getting worse. Syria’s civil war entered its fifth year in March, and Libya has seen a recent surge in violence.

• Human rights groups are calling on the European Union to launch a big rescue operation on the scale of Mare Nostrum. The Italian government has poured money and manpower into the mission.

Captain Blamed for Mediterranean Migrant Deaths .

Officials have blamed the Tunisian captain of a fishing boat for causing thedeaths of hundreds of migrants. They say the migrants were locked insidewhen their boat overturned in the Mediterranean Sea over the weekend. Prosecutors said on Tuesday that 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Malek wasarrested on suspicion of killing many people. The prosecutors said the captainmistakenly turned his overloaded boat into a merchant ship that was comingto its rescue.

Only 28 survivors have been brought to Italy from the hundreds ofBangladeshi migrants on board the boat. Most of the migrants were Africanand Bangladeshi. Police have said as many as 950 people may have died. Itappears to be the worst disaster ever among migrants fleeing across theMediterranean Sea to Europe.

The lead prosecutor said so few people survived because most of themigrants on board had been locked in the lower levels of the fishing boat.Many of the passengers were women and children.

The European Union must take a collective stand to tackle migrant trafficking at its source in African countries, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Wednesday. Renzi urged the EU to quickly devise a long-range, comprehensive policy to stop the flood of migrants leaving Libya, and establish refugee camps in Niger, Sudan and elsewhere in Africa with UN assistance. Italy has been rescuing hundreds of migrants.

EU officials say the leaders will commit to doubling the size of the European border agency's efforts in the Mediterranean, but those operations are designed for monitoring migrant movements, not necessarily for saving lives.