Cairo: At least 55 people, including women and children, drowned after a rubber boat carrying dozens of migrants towards Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, according to the UN migration agency on Wednesday. It was the most recent tragedy to occur in this crucial migratory route in the Mediterranean Sea.
The catastrophe, according to the International Organisation for Migration, occurred on Tuesday. The boat left the coastal community of Garabouli, which is located east of Tripoli, carrying at least 60 migrants.
Five migrants, according to the agency, made it through the shipwreck and were brought back to land by the Libyan coast guard. It was unclear what happened to the vessel right away.
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IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli claimed that the boat capsized shortly after leaving Garabouli. She claimed that so far, the bodies of nine men and a child have been recovered by the Libyan coast guard.
According to Msehli, who spoke to The Associated Press, the five survivors are made up of four men—three Pakistanis and one Egyptian—and a Syrian child.
It was the most recent tragedy to occur in the central Mediterranean Sea, a major migration route. According to the IOM, over 4,300 migrants have been intercepted and brought back to land while at least 537 have drowned or gone missing in migrant disasters in the Mediterranean off Libya so far this year.
The first quarter of this year was the deadliest in the Central Mediterranean since 2017, according to the IOM's Missing Migrants Project, which reported at least 441 documented deaths. The agency added that this figure is probably "an undercount of the true number of lives lost," and that it was still looking into a number of other unreported shipwrecks where the fate of more than 300 people onboard was still unknown.
Over 24,680 migrants were intercepted and sent back to the lawless North African nation in 2022, while at least 529 migrants were reported dead and 848 missing off the coast of Libya.
In recent years, Libya has risen to prominence as the main transit country for people fleeing their home countries in Africa and the Middle East in order to reach Europe. After a NATO-backed uprising that overthrew and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, the oil-rich nation descended into chaos.
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In recent years, human traffickers have benefited from the unrest in Libya by smuggling migrants across the country's extensive borders with six different countries. The migrants embark on perilous sea journeys packed into inadequate boats, including rubber boats.
According to UN-commissioned investigators, those who are intercepted and sent back to Libya are kept in government-run detention facilities that are rife with abuses like forced labour, beatings, rapes, and torture — acts that constitute crimes against humanity.
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Before allowing the migrants to board the traffickers' boats to leave Libya, the abuse frequently goes hand in hand with attempts to extract money from the families of those being held.