CAIRO – A boat carrying dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, killing more than 60 people, including women and children, the UN migration agency said.
The shipwreck, which happened overnight between Thursday and Friday, is the latest tragedy in this part of the Mediterranean Sea, a key but dangerous route for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Thousands have died, according to officials.
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement late Saturday that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves swept it off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s west coast and 61 drowned, according to survivors.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world,” the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The European Union’s border agency said in a statement Sunday that its aircraft found a partially deflated rubber boat Thursday afternoon in Libya’s search and rescue zone.
“People are in grave danger due to bad weather conditions, with waves reaching a height of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet),” said the agency known as Frontex.
The central Mediterranean is known as one of the most dangerous migrant crossings. AP
The Emergency Phone – an important line for migrants in distress – said in a tweet that some migrants on board contacted a group of volunteers who in turn alerted authorities including the Libyan coast guard, “who stated that they would not find them.”
A spokesman for the Libyan coast guard was not immediately available for comment.
Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even as the North African country has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
More than 2,250 people have died on the central European route this year, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, IOM spokesman.
It is “a dramatic figure that shows that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” wrote Di Giacomo di X.
According to IOM’s missing migrants project, at least 940 migrants were reported dead and 1,248 disappeared in Libya between January 1 and November 18.
The project, which tracks migration movements, says about 14,900 migrants, including more than 1,000 women and more than 530 children, have been intercepted and returned to Libya this year.
In 2022, the project reported 529 dead and 848 missing in Libya. More than 24,600 have been intercepted and returned to Libya.
Traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling migrants across the country’s long border, which is shared with six countries. Migrants crammed into ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and embarked on risky sea voyages.
Those intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers riddled with abuse, including forced labor, beatings, rape and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to UN-commissioned investigators.
The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on smugglers’ boats to Europe.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
