More than 60 migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Libya, a global migrant company stated on Saturday, one other chapter within the unrelenting toll within the Mediterranean Sea as individuals in Africa flee famine, battle and different upheavals for distant shores.
The International Organization for Migration in Libya stated in a submit on the social platform X that ladies and kids have been among the many 61 migrants who died. The Libyan authorities didn’t instantly touch upon the company’s report.
The boat had set off from the Libyan metropolis of Zwara with about 86 individuals, the company stated, citing survivors of the shipwreck. It was unclear precisely when it started its voyage. The I.O.M. stated “the central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.”
Earlier this 12 months, not less than 73 migrants died in one other catastrophe off the Libyan coast. That episode concerned a ship carrying not less than 80 those who was believed to have departed from Qasr Alkayar, Libya, on Feb. 14, sure for Europe, the I.O.M. stated on the time. Seven individuals survived, and 11 our bodies have been recovered, it stated.
More than 28,000 Africans have died or disappeared within the Mediterranean since 2014, in response to I.O.M. knowledge. Many set off for nations like Italy and Greece, in one among Europe’s most defining challenges.
In June, not less than 79 individuals drowned within the Mediterranean after a big boat carrying migrants sank, the Greek authorities stated, within the deadliest such episode off the nation’s coast for the reason that peak of the 2015 migration disaster. More than 100 individuals have been rescued.
And in February, a wood boat with 130 to 180 migrants broke aside in opposition to rocks close to a seaside city in southern Italy, drowning not less than 59 individuals, together with a new child and different kids, the authorities stated.
European leaders have put in place a patchwork of insurance policies to deal with the inflow, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy asserting in November that her authorities had struck an settlement with Albania, a non-European Union nation throughout the Adriatic Sea, to outsource the processing and containment of migrants. But Italian politicians shocked by Ms. Meloni’s announcement questioned whether or not the settlement was authorized, moral, sensible and even actual.
Greece has taken a tricky line on migrants. Its judiciary has cracked down on nongovernmental organizations that work with migrants, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s authorities has been accused of illegally pushing asylum seekers again at sea.
Source: www.nytimes.com