Up to 150 Europe-bound migrants, including women and children, were missing and feared drowned on Thursday after the boats they were traveling in capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, the nation’s coast guard and the UN refugee agency said.
A top UN official described the shipwreck as “the worst Mediterranean tragedy” so far this year.
The International Rescue Committee said the tragedy was a stark reminder of the humanitarian crisis emerging out of Libya and of the urgent need for search-and-rescue missions to be resumed in the Mediterranean.
Photo: AFP
Libyan Coast Guard spokesman Ayoub Gassim said that two boats carrying about 300 migrants capsized about 120km east of Tripoli.
He said that 137 migrants were rescued and returned to Libya.
The coast guard has recovered just one body so far, he added.
UN refugee agency spokesman Charlie Yaxley said 147 had been saved.
“We estimate that 150 migrants are potentially missing and died at sea,” he said. “The dead include women and children.”
Yaxley added that so far this year, one person has died on the route from Libya to Europe for every six people that reached European shores.
“The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.
In January, 117 died or went missing off Libya’s coast and about 65 people drowned after their boat sank off the coast of Tunisia in May.
Grandi called on European nations to resume rescue missions in the Mediterranean, halted after an EU decision, and appealed for an end to migrant detentions in Libya.
He said safe pathways out of the North African country are needed “before it is too late for many more desperate people.”
Asked about the latest boat sinking and deaths, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq expressed the world body’s concerns.
“We’ve made clear the need for all the countries in the region to work to ensure first and foremost that the lives of those people who have placed themselves in such great risk are protected,” he said.
After the uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, Libya became a major conduit for African migrants and refugees seeking a better life in Europe.
Traffickers and armed groups have exploited Libya’s chaos since his overthrow and have been implicated in widespread abuses of migrants, including torture and abduction for ransom.
Thomas Garofalo, director for Libya at the International Rescue Committee, which responds to global humanitarian crises, said migrants “intercepted at sea must not be returned to Libya.”
Earlier this week, the Libyan Coast Guard intercepted about three dozen migrants off the coast and took them to a detention center near Tripoli where an airstrike killed more than 50 people earlier this month.
More than 200 detainees are still being held at the Tajoura detention center, near the front lines of fighting between rival Libyan factions.
The UN has voiced concern for their safety.
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