Ninety migrants feared drowned off Libyan coast
IOM, the UN migration agency, said in a statement that an estimated 90-100 migrants are reported to have been on board a boat, when it capsized off the coast of Libya in the early hours of 2 February.
According to IOM Libya’s Olivia Headon, 10 bodies washed up on Libyan shores, near the town of Zuwara, 100 km west of Tripoli.
The Security Directorate of Zuwara said it had received a report from locals of a dead body seen on the shore. When a police patrol moved to the site, they found the bodies of 10 Pakistani nationals and a Libyan woman.
Two survivors are reported to have swum to shore, while another was rescued by a fishing boat. The survivors, who were one Libyan and two Pakistanis, said most of those who drowned were Pakistani nationals.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office confirmed that 16 Pakistanis died in the boat capsize off the Libyan coast while the bodies of 12 have been recovered.
Ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal told The Associated Press that Pakistani diplomats had reached Libya’s coastal area to collect more details. He said that his government will try to take back the bodies of the Pakistanis who died in the tragedy.
Faisal later took to twitter to share the names and details of the victims. Eight bodies were recovered and identified while four were recovered but only identified by their friends and identification documents were yet to be found. He further stated that documents of six individuals were found but bodies are yet to be recovered.
These confirmed deaths bring the total number of fatalities on the Mediterranean Sea through the first month of 2018 to 246.
Thirty more migrants in the Horn of Africa and seven in North Africa are also reported missing so far this year.
IOM has repeatedly issued warnings over the extreme dangers facing migrants who try to reach Europe via the so-called central Mediterranean route, which connects Libya to Italy.
“We know that the weather was calm, so that’s indicating that the smugglers – who are cavalier to say the least – have hugely overloaded this vessel,” IOM’s Leonard Doyle told Al Jazeera. “We need to get the word out to people, desperate people around the world, who think they are coming to a better life and they are reading about it on social media, that it’s not the case.”
TMP – 21/02/2018
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