At least 42 illegal migrants are missing and presumed dead after a rubber boat capsized off the coast of Libya, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday.
Libyan authorities rescued seven survivors who had drifted at sea for six days after the vessel, carrying 49 people, sank near the Al Buri oilfield, an offshore facility north-northwest of the Libyan coast.
IOM said the illegal migrants were from Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Somalia.
Libya has become a transit route for illegal migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean since the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Gaddafi during a NATO-backed uprising.
The number of illegal migrants who drowned in the central Mediterranean had already surpassed 1,000 this year, the IOM said, and this week’s incident raised that toll "even further". Across the entire Mediterranean, there were 2,452 such deaths in 2024, IOM data shows.
In mid-October, a group of 61 bodies of illegal migrants were recovered on the coast west of the capital Tripoli. In September, IOM said at least 50 people had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese “refugees” caught fire off Libya’s coast.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Ahmed Elumami; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)