2023-12-17 06:30:03
CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying dozens of migrants bound for Europe sank off the coast of Libya, killing more than 60 people, including women and children, the UN migration agency reported. .
Saturday’s shipwreck was the latest tragedy in this area of the Mediterranean Sea, a key dangerous route for migrants seeking a better life in Europe, where authorities say thousands of people have died.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration detailed in a statement that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves caused it to capsize off the city of Zuwara on the western coast of Libya and that 61 migrants drowned, citing the survivors of the “dramatic shipwreck.”
“The central Mediterranean remains one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world,” the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
In recent years, Libya has become the main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The North African nation has descended into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The country is a major departure point for migrants trying to reach European shores via the deadly central Mediterranean. More than 2,250 people died on this route this year, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, IOM spokesman.
It is “a dramatic figure that shows that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote in X.
In recent years, human traffickers have taken advantage of the chaos in Libya by crossing migrants across the country’s extensive borders, which it shares with six nations. Migrants are crammed into ill-equipped boats, including rubber dinghies, and undertake dangerous sea journeys.
Those who are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers plagued by abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rape and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to United Nations-appointed investigators.
The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort detainees’ families before imprisoned migrants are allowed to leave Libya on smuggling boats for Europe.
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