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Migrant Boats Capsize Off Libya Killing 11 | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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TOPSHOT – This handout picture released on May 25, 2016 by the Italian Navy (Marina Militare) shows the shipwreck of an overcrowded boat of migrants off the Libyan coast today. At least seven migrants have drowned after the heavily overcrowded boat they were sailing on overturned, the Italian navy said. The navy said 500 people had been pulled to safety and seven bodies recovered, but rescue operations were continuing and the death toll could rise.

The navy’s Bettica patrol boat spotted “a boat in precarious conditions off the coast of Libya with numerous migrants aboard,” it said in a statement. / AFP PHOTO / MARINA MILITARE AND AFP PHOTO / STR / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / MARINA MILITARE” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS


Migrant Boats Capsize Off Libya Killing 11

by | May 8, 2017 | Middle East |

Migrant Boats Capsize Off Libya Killing 11

Eleven migrants have died and nearly 200 are missing after two boats sank off the coast of Libya, UN agencies said Monday citing survivors, in the latest such tragedy.

The first involved an inflatable craft which left Libya early Friday with 132 people on board, only to start deflating a few hours later, before overturning.

Some 50 survivors were picked up by a Danish container ship, the Alexander Maersk, which was alerted to divert by Italian coastguards and dropped them off on Sunday in Pozzallo, southern Sicily.

Representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) were able to meet them on Monday to hear their accounts.

Survivors told them that women and children were among those missing.

At the same time, the bodies of 10 women and one child were found Monday on a beach in Zawiya, 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of Tripoli, according to an official for the Libyan Red Crescent.

Then on Sunday seven migrants — a woman and six men — were rescued by Libyan fishermen and coastguards off the coast of the Libyan capital.

An IOM spokesman who met them said they had set out on a boat with at least 120 people on board, including about 30 women and nine children.

In all more than 6,000 migrants were rescued Friday and Saturday in international waters off the coast of Libya and brought to Italy, while several hundred were rescued in Libyan waters and taken back to Libya.

The number of people leaving Libya in the hope of starting a new life in Europe is up nearly 50 percent this year compared with the opening months of 2016.

With most departures coming in the warm summer months, the trend points to around 250,000 people arriving over the course of 2017. Some 500,000 migrants were registered in Italy in the three years spanning 2014-16.