Dozens dead after two more boats capsize in Mediterranean

At least 34 people have died and at least 20 are still missing after a boat carrying migrants capsized between Sicily and Tunisia Friday. Rescue workers have saved 211 people so far, and Maletese forces, the Italian Navy and Coast Guard are still looking for more survivors. There were around 250 people onboard the ship.

The sinking comes just a week after more than 300 people drowned when a boat carrying Eritrean and Somali migrants sank near the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

In a separate incident, 12 people died when another boat sank off the Egyptian coast, near Alexandria.

On the first of Friday’s incidents, Al Jazeera's Karl Stagno-Navarra, reporting from Malta, said that a Maltese navy aircraft had spotted the migrant boat and watched it capsize.

"Immediately, a rescue operation was launched and a Maltese navy boat reached the migrants in a few minutes," Stagno-Navarra said.

"We have to understand that these are migrants who have no experience in the water. Some had life jackets some didn’t."

Last week's disaster was one of the worst in a long migrant crisis that has seen tens of thousands of people arrive in flimsy, overcrowded boats in southern Italy, and some vessels wrecked. Lampedusa, a tiny island midway between Sicily and Tunisia, has borne the brunt.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 32,000 have arrived in southern Italy and Malta this year alone, around two-thirds of whom have filed requests for asylum.

Earlier on Friday, at least 500 more migrants in at least three separate boats arrived or were rescued on the way to different parts of Sicily.

Most migrants come from sub-Saharan Africa, but this year many are fleeing the Syrian civil war or political turmoil in Egypt and other parts of North Africa. Many are drawn by hopes of finding work in Europe and often do not stay in Italy.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East try to cross the Mediterranean Sea each year, seeking a better life in Europe, but the journey is fraught with danger.

After last week's Lampedusa incident, its survivors said the ship began taking on water just a few hundred yards from the Italian coast. They said three fishing boats ignored their pleas for help, and passengers ignited a blanket in the hopes of alerting the coast guard, to no avail.

Italy has called on the European Union to provide more assistance in dealing with the surge in refugees who are fleeing crises in North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East at the rate of tens of thousands per year.

Al Jazeera