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Refugee agencies blame EU for hundreds of sea deaths

AID groups and the UN refugee agency blamed the European Union today for scaling down Mediterranean rescue operations after over 300 would-be migrants perished at sea.

They had tried to cross the freezing cold sea in open, rubber boats and were reported missing today by survivors.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Save the Children, Amnesty International and other aid groups blasted the new EU-backed patrol as insufficient.

The EU took over Mediterranean patrols in November after Italy phased out its robust Mare Nostrum operation, which was launched in 2013 after 360 migrants drowned off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

But the EU Triton mission only patrols a few miles off Europe’s coast, whereas Mare Nostrum operations took Italian rescue ships up close to Libya’s coast.

“The Triton operation doesn’t have as its principal mandate saving human lives and thus cannot be the response that is urgently needed,” said UNHCR southern Europe head Laurens Jolles.

UNHCR said that survivors had reported that four boats left together, without food or water, and that the boats began taking on water almost immediately.

The Italian coastguard and a merchant ship had rescued 107 people, but the agency’s spokeswoman in Italy Carlotta Sami said that the victims had been “swallowed up by the waves,” the youngest a child of 12.

A further 29 deaths were reported earlier this week by the Italian coastguard, which said that the victims had died of hypothermia during a voyage that began in Libya.

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