More than 60 migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Libya, an international immigration agency said on Saturday. This is another chapter in the relentless death toll in the Mediterranean as people in Africa flee famine, conflict and other unrest to distant shores.
This was announced by the International Organization for Migration in Libya a post on the social platform X that among the 61 migrants who died were women and children. The Libyan government did not initially comment on the agency's report.
The boat set off from the Libyan town of Zwara with about 86 people, the agency said, citing survivors of the shipwreck. It was unclear exactly when it began its journey. The IOM said: “The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world.”
At the beginning of the year, another disaster off the Libyan coast killed at least 73 migrants. This incident involved a boat carrying at least 80 people that was believed to have left Qasr Alkayar in Libya for Europe on February 14. said the IOM by the time. Seven people survived and eleven bodies were recovered, it was said.
According to IOM data, more than 28,000 Africans have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean since 2014. Many headed north, to countries like Italy and Greece, in one of Europe's greatest challenges.
In June, at least 79 people drowned in the Mediterranean after a large boat carrying migrants sank, according to Greek authorities. It was the deadliest incident of its kind off the country's coast since the peak of the migration crisis in 2015. More than 100 people were rescued.
And in February, a wooden boat carrying 130 to 180 migrants broke apart on rocks near a coastal town in southern Italy, drowning at least 59 people, including a newborn and other children, according to authorities.
European leaders have introduced a patchwork of measures to deal with the influx. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced in November that her government had reached an agreement with Albania, a non-EU country across the Adriatic, to outsource processing and containment of migrants. But Italian politicians, surprised by Ms. Meloni's announcement, questioned whether the agreement was legal, ethical, practical or even real.
Greece takes a hard line against migrants. The country's judiciary is cracking down on non-governmental organizations that work with migrants, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' government has been accused of illegally pushing asylum seekers back at sea.