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CAIRO (AP) — A ship carrying dozens of migrants attempting to succeed in Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, leaving greater than 60 folks lifeless, together with girls and youngsters, the U.N. migration company stated.
The shipwreck, which occurred in a single day between Thursday and Friday, was the most recent tragedy on this a part of the Mediterranean Sea, a key however harmful route for migrants searching for a greater life in Europe. Hundreds have died, based on officers.
The U.N.’s Worldwide Group for Migration stated in a press release late Saturday that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when sturdy waves swamped it off the city of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast and that 61 migrants drowned, based on survivors.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of many world’s most harmful migration routes,” the company wrote on social media platform X, previously referred to as Twitter.
The European Union’s border company stated in a press release Sunday that its airplane positioned the partially deflated rubber boat Thursday night in Libya’s search and rescue zone.
“The folks had been in extreme hazard due to antagonistic climate situations, with waves reaching heights of two.5 meters (8.2 toes),” the company, referred to as Frontex, stated.
Alarm Cellphone — a hotline for migrants in misery — stated in a tweet that some migrants onboard reached out to the volunteer group who in flip alerted authorities together with the Libyan coastguard, “who acknowledged that they’d not seek for them.”
A spokesman for the Libyan coast guard was not instantly accessible for remark.
Libya has in recent times emerged because the dominant transit level for migrants fleeing battle and poverty in Africa and the Center East, despite the fact that the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed rebellion that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Greater than 2,250 folks died on the central European route this yr, based on Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesperson.
It’s “a dramatic determine which demonstrates that sadly not sufficient is being accomplished to save lots of lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote on X.
Based on the IOM’s lacking migrants venture, not less than 940 migrants had been reported lifeless and 1,248 lacking off Libya between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18.
The venture, which tracks migration actions, stated about 14,900 migrants, together with over 1,000 girls and greater than 530 kids, had been intercepted and returned to Libya this yr.
In 2022, the venture reported 529 lifeless and 848 lacking off Libya. Over 24,600 had been intercepted and returned to Libya.
Human traffickers in recent times have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants throughout the nation’s prolonged borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, together with rubber boats, and set off on dangerous sea voyages.
Those that are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention facilities rife with abuses, together with compelled labor, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that quantity to crimes in opposition to humanity, based on U.N.-commissioned investigators.
The abuse usually accompanies makes an attempt to extort cash from the households of the imprisoned migrants earlier than permitting them to go away Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.
The story has been corrected to indicate that the shipwreck occurred in a single day between Dec. 14-15.
Related Press journalist Renata Brito contributed from Barcelona, Spain.
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