Source: news.nationalpost.com - Monday, April 20, 2015The European Union proposed doubling the size of its Mediterranean search and rescue operations on Monday as an unrelenting tide of migrants washed 93 ashore like flotsam on the Greek island of Rhodes and the first bodies were placed in hearses of some 900 feared drowned in a capsizing off Libya now described as a massacre. Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said as many as 900 people may have died in Sunday’s disaster off the coast of Libya when a large boat capsized. Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying the disaster could turn out to be “the worst massacre ever seen in the Mediterranean.” EU ministers held a moment of silence at a meeting to discuss the crisis in Luxembourg. The bloc’s executive, the European Commission, presented a 10 point plan to address the crisis, which would include doubling the size and the funding of Triton, an EU naval operation in the Mediterranean. But even that would still leave the operation smaller and less well-funded than an Italian mission abandoned last year because of its cost and because of domestic opposition to sea rescues that could attract more migrants. Lino Azzopardi / AP Photo The few survivors of the smuggler's boat that overturned off the coasts of Libya lie on the deck of the Italian Coast Guard ship Bruno Gregoretti, in Valletta's Grand Harbour, Monday, April 20 2015. So far rescuers saved 28 people and recovered All Related
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