Two migrant boats capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of several towns in western Libya, leaving at least 57 bodies behind, a coast guard officer and an aid worker reported on Tuesday.
A Red Crescent relief worker in Sabratha, in western Tripoli, reported that 46 bodies had been found on the beach in the previous six days; all of them were “illegal migrants” from a single boat.
According to coast guard officer Fathi al-Zayani, eleven bodies, including one that of a child, were found off the coast of Qarabulli in eastern Tripoli. According to him, the migrants came from Pakistan, Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt.
The Sabratha Red Crescent organisation published images online showing humanitarian workers wearing gloves and face masks putting remains in black bags at the back of pickup vehicles.
More bodies were anticipated to wash up in the following days, the relief worker added.
One survivor, Bassam Mahmoud from Egypt, claimed that one of the boats that departed for Europe at around 2 am local time on Tuesday carried roughly 80 passengers.
He claimed that when the boat was sinking, there was an argument, but the captain refused to intervene.
“We kept fighting until someone caught up with us. The scene was horrific and some died (in the water) in front of me,” he told Reuters.
According to the International Organisation 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, which is a record for a three-month period in the previous six years.
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.