At the very least 42 migrants are lacking and presumed useless after a rubber boat capsized off the coast of Libya, the Worldwide Group for Migration stated on Wednesday.
Libyan authorities rescued seven survivors who had drifted at sea for six days after the vessel, carrying 49 individuals, sank close to the Al Buri oilfield, an offshore facility north-northwest of the Libyan coast.
IOM stated the migrants had been from Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Somalia.
Libya has grow to be a transit route for migrants fleeing battle and poverty to Europe throughout the Mediterranean because the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Gaddafi throughout a NATO-backed rebellion.
The variety of migrants who drowned within the central Mediterranean had already surpassed 1,000 this yr, the IOM stated, and this week’s incident raised that toll “even additional”. Throughout the whole Mediterranean, there have been 2,452 such deaths in 2024, IOM knowledge exhibits.
“This tragic occasion, coming simply weeks after different lethal incidents off Surman and Lampedusa, underscores the persistent risks confronted by migrants and refugees alongside the Central Mediterranean Route,” it stated within the assertion.
In mid-October, a bunch of 61 our bodies of migrants had been recovered on the coast west of the capital Tripoli. In September, IOM stated at the least 50 individuals had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese refugees caught hearth off Libya’s coast.
On Tuesday, a number of states together with Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. assembly in Geneva to shut detention centres the place rights teams say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and generally killed.
(Reuters – Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Ahmed Elumami; Modifying by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)
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