Times of Malta’s Darrin Zammit Lupi was on board the Phoenix shooting the drama during a rescue operation which saved 600 migrants.

Five men were arrested in Italy yesterday on suspicion of causing the deaths of some 200 migrants in the most tragic incident in the Mediterranean in three months.

The men – two Libyans, two Algerians and a Tunisian – were accused of beating back the migrants with knives, clubs and belts, because they were unable to bail out water and tried to break out of the hold.

Most of the dead were locked in the hold of a boat that sank off the port of Zuwarah in Libya last Wednesday. Some 600 migrants were travelling on the boat but 400 were rescued thanks to the timely intervention of two rescue vessels. Twenty six corpses have been found, the rest are presumed dead.

A rescuer tightens a young survivor’s belt.

Police said the accused men charged the migrants between $1,200 (€1,100) and $1,800 (€1,600) for the voyage, depending on where they would be placed on the deck of the boat. Those in the hold paid about half as much as those above, they added.

A police reconstruction based on witnesses’ accounts said three of the men, part of a Libyan-based human trafficking ring, alternated steering the boat while the other two kept watch over the migrants.

Migrants on the deck were ordered to sit on the hatch of the hold to prevent those below from getting out.

Those in the hold paid half as much

The migrants drowned when the boat flipped over as an Irish navy ship approached. The episode was the latest in a long string of migrant disasters in the Mediterranean.

Babies were among the survivors during the operation by MOAS (right). Photos: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Meanwhile, about 600 migrants were rescued from a listing fishing boat off Libya on Thursday evening, in a delicate operation steered by the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS).

The overloaded boat was close to capsizing when MOAS’s Phoenix and the Médecins Sans Frontières vessel Bourbon intervened.

In a tweet, MOAS said it had completed its most dangerous and complex rescue to date.

More than 2,000 migrants and refugees have died so far this year trying to reach Europe by boat. More than 90,000 migrants have reached Italy.

Though the number of tragic incidents have gone down since EU states decided to beef up rescue resources in the Mediterranean, the flow of asylum seekers persisted, especially since many try to flee troubled Libya.

A conference to be held in Malta in November will bring together EU and African leaders together to discuss the migration dilemma.

A picture released by the Italian police showing migrants involved in Wednesday’s shipwreck off Libya. Right: Ali Rouibah, one of five survivors arrested on suspicion of people trafficking.