Rome - EU leaders head into a summit on the Mediterranean migrant crisis on Thursday under pressure to stem the increasingly deadly flow of refugees trying to reach Europe by sea from Africa.
As survivors laid bare the full horror of last weekend's catastrophic shipwreck near Libya, the bloc's leaders were fighting off fresh allegations of callous disregard for African, Asian and Arab lives.
Days after 800 people were feared to have died in the worst disaster of its kind, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday compared his country's hosting of two million refugees from Syria unfavourably with the EU's approach of "letting the boats sink and leaving them to their deaths".
The European leaders are also combating scepticism about whether there is much they can do.
"The underlying issues are conflict, oppression and poverty. You can't resolve that with a 10-point plan from Brussels," said Andrew Geddes, a migration expert at Britain's University of Sheffield.
The vast majority of those who died at the weekend were locked in the hold or the middle deck of a 20-metre (66-foot) converted fishing boat when it capsized in the early hours of Sunday following a collision with a Portuguese cargo ship responding to its distress signal.
Only 28 survivors and 24 bodies were recovered and the lucky few say there were hundreds on board, spread over three levels.
"Those who had the least money were stuffed into the hold at the bottom, and locked inside," according to a Bangladeshi teenager identified as Abdirizzak.
When the first collision happened in pitch darkness, scenes of pure terror ensued, he told Italy's Corriere della Sera.
"Everyone was screaming, pushing, punching, elbowing -- terrified. From below we could hear those who were locked in shouting 'Help, Help!'
"I don't know how but somehow we managed to swim outside just in time before the boat went down."
AFP
