Up to 500 people believed dead after overloaded refugee ship sinks in Mediterranean

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) fears that up to 500 people are dead following a shipwreck in the Mediterranean last week. A repurposed fishing boat was reportedly carrying as many as 500 Africans from eastern Libya toward Italy when it sunk, survivors told UNHCR.

While a full and confirmed account is still unclear, survivors said that the ship sunk several miles out to sea when smugglers tried to transfer a group of migrants from a small boat onto a larger fishing boat. The large boat sunk as the extra passengers got aboard, likely due to overcrowding. Forty-one survivors who were still on the small boat when the larger boat sank reported the event to the UNHCR.

"My wife and my baby drowned in front of me. I was one of the few who managed to swim back to the smaller boat," an Ethiopian migrant named Muaz told the BBC.

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The survivors drifted in the smaller boat until they were rescued on April 16 by a Filipino merchant ship that took them to southern Greece. The exact date of the shipwreck is still unknown.

However, the survivors' reports are consistent with information known by Greek authorities. The shipwreck would then be the largest in the Mediterranean in many months. With an estimated 500 dead, it brings the Mediterranean's total number of mortalities in 2016 to over 1,000, which is more than a quarter of last year's record.