TRIPOLI: According to a coast guard officer and an aid worker, Pakistanis are among the 57 migrants whose dead have washed ashore after two migrant boats capsized in the Mediterranean off several towns in western Libya.
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One survivor, Bassam Mahmoud from Egypt, claimed that one of the boats that departed for Europe at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday carried roughly 80 passengers.
He claimed that when the boat was sinking, there was an argument, but the captain refused to intervene.
He said until someone caught up with them, they kept battling. Some died (in the sea) in front of him, and the scene was horrifying.
Concerning the Recovering Bodies
According to coast guard officer Fathi al-Zayani, eleven bodies, including one child, were found off the coast of Qarabulli in eastern Tripoli. The migrants came from Pakistan, Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt.
A Red Crescent relief worker in Sabratha, in western Tripoli, reported that 46 bodies had been on the beach in the previous six days; all were “illegal migrants” from a single boat.
The Sabratha Red Crescent organization published images online showing humanitarian workers wearing gloves and face masks and putting remains in black bags at the back of pickup trucks.
About drowned bodies in 2023
According to the International Organization for Migration, 441 migrants and refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the first three months of 2023 while trying to travel from North Africa to Europe, a record for three months in the previous six years.
Libya became the primary departure point for African migrants trying to migrate to Europe ten years after toppling Muammar Gaddafi in an uprising supported by NATO in 2011.
In the past two days, Italy has rescued 47 boats in the central Mediterranean Sea carrying over 1,600 migrants and brought them ashore on the island of Lampedusa.
