Many families, including up to 70 children, were among the hundreds of people who perished after their boat was deliberately sunk by smugglers a week ago, three Palestinian survivors said shortly after being rescued.

Some of the migrants from the boat spent two to three days in the sea before drowning when the weather turned bad.

Three of the survivors, Palestinians aged between 25 and 28, were brought to Malta on Sunday. Nine others were taken to Crete, although one died on the way, and two were taken to Sicily.

They were among 300 to 500 migrants who set sail from Egypt on Saturday, September 6.

The Palestinians told investigators that the people on board were mostly Middle-Eastern, the bulk Syrian and many Palestinian, as well as some Sudanese. Most of them were families, with up to 70 children among them ranging from one to 10 years old.

They waited to make sure it had sunk completely... they were laughing

The group ended up stranded on the high seas 300 miles south east of Malta after their smugglers, also said to be Palestinian and Egyptian, deliberately rammed their boat when they ignored their orders to disembark from their vessel on to a smaller one. They spent two to three days in the sea until the first rescuers arrived at the scene on Friday evening.

The exact number of people on board has still not been established with confidence because the migrants are giving different versions on this detail.

The survivors brought to the island said they formed part of a group of about 300.

However, the International Organisation for Migration insisted yesterday, on the basis of the accounts it has collected from survivors in Sicily and Crete, that there may have been as many as 500 aboard.

The Geneva-based agency said the survivors they had spoken to remembered the captain doing a headcount and putting the number at 400, excluding children under 10.

According to witnesses’ testimonies, the ship had two decks with as many as 300 people below.

One of the survivors arrives in Malta. Photo: Justin Gatt, AFM

Weather turned and they started to slip under water

They were at sea for four days and during that time were transferred to other vessels.

This seems to be a new trend among smugglers who are taking to transfering immigrants from smaller, faster dinghies on to slower but larger, fishing vessels waiting to take migrants offshore.

In fact, the Palestinian survivors told Maltese police they had switched vessels three times before boarding the larger boat.

The numbers dying off Europe’s coasts are shocking and unacceptable

The smugglers approached and ordered them to transfer again on to a smaller vessel but it could clearly not take that many people, the survivors said.

The smugglers rammed their boat, hooked it to theirs and started pulling until it overturned.

Many of the initial survivors managed to stay afloat but on the third day, shortly before the first rescuers reached the scene, the weather turned and people started disappearing under water.

“After they hit our boat they waited to make sure that it had sunk completely before leaving. They were laughing,” one of the survivors told the IOM.

The Palestinian survivors in Malta said they left Gaza and hooked up with smugglers immediately after having paid some $4,000 to reach Italy.

At first the journey was smooth and very well organised, including buses to reach the Egyptian port of Damietta.

However, the trip at sea proved to be a different story altogether.

IOM director general William Lacy Swing said these reports point to a growing death toll off Europe’s shores which this year already approaches 3,000.

That is nearly four times the figure from 2013, which IOM’s Missing Migrants Project estimated to be 700 deaths.

“The numbers dying off Europe’s coasts are shocking and unacceptable. These are women, children and men who only hope for a more dignified life.

“The risks they take reflect their desperation and we cannot keep abandoning them to their fate,” he said.