At least 114 people died and 230 were still missing after a boat packed with irregular African migrants sank off Lampedusa yesterday.

As Italian authorities continued to pull bodies from the sea around the tiny island, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the EU must move beyond words on irregular migration, as he called for changes in asylum laws.

Dr Muscat told a brief press conference at Castille that the tragedy should not only make headlines for a day. Expressing solidarity with the victims and Italy, he said no EU country should be left alone to deal with “illegal” migration.

Malta has received €84.96 million from the EU to help it cope with migration influxes since 2007, but Dr Muscat has persistently called for more solidarity and assistance.

Yesterday’s disaster occurred when the boat’s motor stopped working and the vessel began to take on water, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said. People on board burned a sheet to attract the attention of rescuers, starting a fire.

The panicked passengers moved to one side, causing the boat to capsize, the minister told a news conference.

Some 500 passengers, mostly Eritreans and Somalis, were thought to have been aboard the 20-metre vessel when it sank no more than a kilometre from shore.

A fishing boat raised the alarm at 7.20am. Witnesses reported grim scenes as bodies recovered from the water were laid out along the quayside in what is one the worst ever recorded disasters for migrants seeking to reach Europe from Africa.

In a statement, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, said Europe had to step up its efforts to prevent these tragedies and show solidarity both with migrants and with countries that are experiencing increasing migratory flows.

‘Europe must work to prevent such tragedies’

“We have to become better at identifying and rescuing vessels at risk,” she said.

“We also need to intensify our efforts to fight criminal networks exploiting human despair so that they cannot continue to put people’s lives at risk in small, overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels.”

While praising the Italian coastguard, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, expressed dismay at “a rising global phenomenon of migrants and people fleeing conflict or persecution and perishing at sea”.

From January 1 to September 30 this year, UNHCR estimates that some 30,100 irregular migrants arrived in Italy, with the vast majority (26,100) landing in Lampedusa and Sicily.

As news of the drama emerged, Italian senator Roberto Formigoni said in a discussion programme on Rai 24 that Malta and Spain were condemning migrants to their deaths when they pushed them back.

The Maltese Government, which had no connection to this incident, had threatened to send a group of irregular migrants back to Libya in July before they could seek asylum in Malta. The European Court of Human Rights had issued an order to halt the deportation.

Amnesty International said of yesterday’s incident: “It is high time the Italian authorities and the EU increase their search-and-rescue capacity and co-operation in the Mediterranean Sea, rather than concentrating resources on closing off the borders.”

Eritreans and Somalis make up the bulk of irregular migrants and asylum seekers who arrive in Malta.

Yesterday’s tragedy happened just four days after 13 irregular migrants drowned off the eastern coast of Sicily.

Earlier this summer, the UN had estimated that 40 irregular migrants were killed trying to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa in the first six months of the year. Last year 500 were estimated to have died on the perilous route.

Last Wednesday a draft report from the human rights committee of the Council of Europe said that Italy was “ill-prepared for a new surge of mixed migration on its coasts”. It said Italy has “structural deficiencies... notably in terms of reception, detention and return” of irregular migrants.

Ms Malmström said yesterday that although the Commission was continuing efforts to engage with countries of origin and transit, “we should not forget that there are still many people in need of international protection. I therefore call upon member states to engage more in the resettlement of people in need of international protection.”

Pope Francis, who visited the island in July on his first papal trip outside Rome, said he felt “great pain” for the “many victims of the latest tragic shipwreck today off Lampedusa”.

“The word that comes to mind is ‘shame’,” the Pope said in unscripted remarks after a speech in the Vatican.

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