A boat carrying dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe on Saturday capsized off the coast of Libya, leaving more than 60 people dead, including women and children, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
The shipwreck was 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, officials said.
Photo: AP
The UN migration agency said in a statement, citing survivors, that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves swamped it off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast and that 61 migrants drowned.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes,” the agency wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Libya has in the past few years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even though the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
More than 2,250 people died on the central European route this year, IOM spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo said.
It’s “a dramatic figure which demonstrates that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote on X.
The IOM’s missing migrants project said that at least 940 migrants were reported dead and 1,248 missing off Libya between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18.
About 14,900 migrants, including more than 1,000 women and more than 530 children, were intercepted and returned to Libya this year, said the project, which tracks migration movements.
Last year, the project reported 529 dead and 848 missing off Libya. More than 24,600 were intercepted and returned to Libya.
Human traffickers in the past few years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS