Escaping Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians drown
Details are emerging concerning the migrant boat that sank this week near Malta's shores, loaded with Palestinian children and families who tried to escape misery in Gaza for a new life in Europe.
The Gaza-based human rights organization Al-Damir (meaning "conscience” in Arabic) has since Sept. 17 been gathering reports and testimonies about the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian refugees off the island of Malta. The refugees left Gaza through a tunnel to Egypt, and boarded a migrant boat in the hopes of reaching Europe and making a new life for themselves. But smugglers deliberately rammed their boat and most of them drowned.
According to reports reaching the organization, some 500 migrants were on the boat when it sank, roughly 400 of them refugees from the Gaza Strip. Only a few survived the tragic accident, picked up by merchant ships sailing in the area, and recounted their ordeal.
