EUROPE’S maritime authorities must accept responsibility for 91 refugees who went missing off the coast of Libya last month, migrant rights campaigners have demanded. 

In the early hours of February 9 the rescue activist network Alarm Phone received a distress call from a sinking rubber boat in international waters. The refugees on board had fled Libya the previous evening.

“The migrants told us that they were in extreme distress, that their boat was deflating, the engine not working and that some people had already gone overboard,” Alarm Phone said yesterday.