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A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says European authorities patrolling the Mediterranean should not wait to receive distress calls from stricken vessels before offering assistance.
"Any boat that is leaving Libya should be considered, at first glance, as a boat in need of assistance," the spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, told reporters in Geneva.
It appears now that hundreds of Libyans have lost their lives at sea in recent weeks, and Fleming said the boats will only keep on coming.
The U.N. agency said that, since March 25, when boats started leaving Libya, at least 800 people are unaccounted for
-- and that figure does not include those who perished Friday when a boat believed to have been carrying 600 people capsized near Tripoli, the Libyan capital, killing many if not most of those on board.
Fleming said a Somali diplomat in Tripoli told the agency that 16 bodies, including those of two babies, had been retrieved so far.
And the number of migrants is increasing, she said. Five boats carrying 2,400 people have arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa recent days, and every one of those boats needed to be rescued by the Italian coast guard and police, she said.
"We honestly believe that the Italian coast guard is doing its best," Fleming said. But she added that, given how many people have drowned, "something isn't working." | 
