The Libyan Red Crescent (LRC) announced on Monday that the bodies of 34 illegal migrants who drowned trying to reach Europe have been found from the western coast of Libya in five days. “For the second day in a row, following reports of the sinking of a migrant boat near the coast of Sabratha (west), 11 bodies were recovered and handed over to the city government total number of bodies found aged 34,” the LRC said on Facebook.
On Wednesday, the LRC reported six bodies were found on the coast of Sabratha, 70 kilometers west of the capital, Tripoli, and 17 more on Sunday. Footage posted to Facebook shows LRC volunteers carrying bodies in black bags and loading them into ambulances. “An inflatable boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized not far from the coast of Sabratha on Wednesday,” a security source in the city told AFP, adding that “the number of victims could rise.” “In this type of incident, the chances of survival are slim, especially when no call for help is made,” the source added.
The NGO Alarm Phone, a group of volunteers that runs a hotline for migrants in need, said Wednesday it received an urgent call from migrants on a tall boat. su is sinking off the coast of Libya with about 100 passengers on board. The NGO claims to have tried to contact “the so-called Libyan coast guard”, but to no avail. The chaos following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 has made Libya the preferred route for tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Arab countries and South Asia seeking to reach Europe. across the Italian coast. Libya is regularly criticized by NGOs for its mistreatment of migrants. Secret, often deadly, border crossing attempts are also on the rise from neighboring Tunisia.
On Monday, the Tunisian coast guard announced it had found 31 bodies of sub-Saharan migrants “decomposing and stranded on the shore”. Dozens of migrants have gone missing after their boat sank off the coast of Tunisia in recent weeks. Authorities also announced on Monday that five migrants from sub-Saharan Africa drowned in two separate shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia in recent hours.
