ROME, Italy (AFP) — As many as 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after traffickers reportedly rammed and sank their boat in what the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) described yesterday as “the worst shipwreck in years”.

Horrific details of the shipwreck, which occurred Wednesday near Malta, were told to IOM by survivors.

“If this story, which police are investigating, is true, it would be the worst shipwreck in years… not an accident but a mass murder, perpetrated by criminals without scruples or any respect for human life,” IOM said in a statement.

Two surviving Palestinians plucked from the water by a freighter on Thursday told the IOM that around 500 passengers had been on one vessel which was wrecked on purpose by people smugglers.

According to the two, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese migrants set out from Damietta in Egypt on September 6, and were forced to change boats several times during the crossing towards Europe.

The traffickers, who were on a separate boat, then ordered them onto a smaller vessel, which many of the migrants feared was too small to hold them.

When they refused to cross over to the new boat, the furious traffickers rammed their boat until it capsized, the survivors told IOM.

The Maltese armed forces said seven people, all unconscious and suffering from hypothermia, were flown to a hospital on Crete.

Two Palestinians spent a day and a half in the water, one wearing a lifejacket and the other holding on to a life buoy with other migrants, all of whom perished.

This year has seen a surge in the numbers of migrants attempting to make the hazardous crossing from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

On Sunday, in a separate incident, dozens of African migrants were feared drowned after a boat carrying around 200 people sank off Libya, with only 36 survivors rescued.