As many as 1,000 people could be missing at sea due to the storms brought by Cyclone Harry in the Mediterranean, migrant-rescue NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans said on February 2.

The organization explained that the estimate derives from testimonies collected by Refugees in Libya and Tunisia.

Mediterranea Saving Humans President Laura Marmorale said it was "one of the biggest tragedies in recent years on the central Mediterranean route" and accused the governments of Italy and Malta of being "silent" and "not moving a finger".

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At least 380 people are missing as of January 24

The only official communication released by the European maritime authority said that at least 380 people had been reported missing at sea as of January 24, Mediterranea said. However, testimonies collected by the organization Refugees in Libya and Tunisia among the communities present in the latter country "provided a wider and more alarming scenario", with several dozen boats said to have departed from the Tunisian port city of Sfax during the days of the cyclone, including many that never returned, the NGO noted.

Over the last week, new names have emerged of "people who were known to have departed but could not be reached anymore - without calls being placed from Libya, without contacts from detention centres, without their death being confirmed and without any trace of them in the Algerian desert", it explained.

Commenting on the data, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called human traffickers "criminal killers".

"You don't set off with a boat in stormy seas," knowing people "are being sent to their death," he said.

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Parliamentary inquiry on the case

Senator Enrico Borghi, the deputy leader of the centrist Italia Viva party in the centre-left opposition who has presented on the issue a parliamentary inquiry to the Interior and Infrastructures Ministers, said he was affected by the "climate of substantial lack of interest and insensibility, starting with the government, which we have addressed with an immediate and urgent parliamentary inquiry, asking, among other things, what it intends to do to track down the 380 people who have allegedly gone missing for more than 10 days in the Mediterranean. If we lose our humanity in front of these tragedies, we lose everything," stated the Senator.

Father Mattia Ferrari, a Catholic priest who volunteers as a chaplain on board an NGO-run migrant rescue vessel Mediterranea Saving Humans, said the number of missing people "cannot fail to shake our conscience, even though this cry continues to be enveloped by silence. A huge number of women, men, and children, our brothers and sisters, has once again been swallowed up by the sea due to injustice, closure and the absence of rescue" operations and "because of our indifference," he said.

Father Ferrari said he was wishing for "God to give us the gift of awakening our consciences, because there will be salvation only if we open the heart to this cry of the poor," he commented.

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