“There were 15 of us on the boat and I am the only one alive,” says Mohammed Adam Oga from his hospital bed in Malta. The migrants had each paid a smuggler $700 (£575; €630) to make the journey from Libya to Europe in the scorching heat of the Central Mediterranean.

Then their fuel ran out. Then their food. Then their water. He is the sole survivor, he says, of the passengers, including a pregnant woman, who attempted the arduous journey in one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world.

“We were at sea for 11 days. We started drinking sea water. After five days, two people died. Then every day, two more died.” He was picked up in Maltese waters on Monday after the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, spotted a dinghy adrift at sea. Footage of the rescue by Malta’s armed forces showed him slumped over a man’s body, before he was airlifted to hospital. “God sent the Maltese to save me,” he told Times of Malta, while being attached to a drip and too weak to walk.(BBC)…[+]