UN: At least 300 migrants missing in new sea tragedy

A migrant who survived a shipwreck is helped as he arrives with others at the Lampedusa harbour Feb 11, 2015. An Italian tug boat rescued 9 people who had been on two different boats on Monday and brought them to the Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday morning. They are the only known survivors from their two boats, leaving more than 200 unaccounted for, they told representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.[Photo/Agencies]

ROME (AP) _ Some 300 migrants who tried to cross the frigid Mediterranean in open, rubber boats, were reported missing Wednesday by survivors as the UN refugee agency and other aid groups sharply criticized the new EU rescue operation as insufficient and costing lives.

The suspected deaths add to the 29 reported earlier in the week by the Italian coast guard, which said those victims had died of hypothermia during the voyage that began over the weekend in Libya, where most smuggling operations originate.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said survivors had reported that four boats had left together, without food or water, and that the boats began taking on water almost immediately. Some 107 people had been rescued by the Italian coast guard and a merchant ship. The agency's spokeswoman in Italy, Carlotta Sami, said the victims had been "swallowed up by the waves," the youngest a child of 12.

The nationalities of the survivors and those missing were not immediately given, but a large proportion of those arriving at the moment are fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Mali and elsewhere.

UNHCR, Save the Children, Amnesty International and other aid groups blasted the new EU-backed rescue patrol as insufficient for the task at hand. The European Union took over Mediterranean patrols after Italy phased out its robust Mare Nostrum operation in November. Mare Nostrum (Our Seas) had been launched in 2013 after 360 migrants drowned off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

But the EU's Triton mission only operates a few miles off Europe's coast _ its job is to patrol Europe's borders _ whereas Mare Nostrum patrols took Italian rescue ships up close to Libya's coast.

"The Triton operation doesn't have as its principal mandate saving human lives, and thus cannot be the response that is urgently needed," Laurens Jolles, the head of the UN agency for southern Europe, said in a statement.

Save The Children called for the EU to urgently meet to restart Mare Nostrum "or another rescue system that has the mandate, the capacity and means to prevent other tragedies."