Migrant boat capsizes off Libya: 1 dead, 22 missing

A boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast Tuesday, leaving one person dead and 22 missing, Libyan authorities said, the latest sea tragedy involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

The coast guard in the eastern Libyan town of Tobruk said the boat was carrying 32 migrants and that nine had been rescued. Survivors have been taken to a port in Tobruk, the coast guard said.

The boat sailed from the Bab al-Zaitoun area, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Tobruk, according to the Abreen, a local aid group. The boat capsized after its engine suffered a mechanical failure, said the group, which supports migrants in eastern Libya.

The group said the migrants on the boat were from Egypt and Syria, and that the nine survivors were taken to a hospital.

In recent years, the North African nation has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. In December, at least 61 migrants, including women and children, drowned in the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast.

Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Human traffickers have benefited from the disorder, smuggling migrants across Libya's extensive borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.

According to the missing migrants project run by the International Organization for Migration, at least 434 migrants were reported dead and 611 missing off Libya in the past eight months. More than 14,100 migrants were intercepted and returned to the chaos-stricken country.

Last year, the IOM reported 962 migrants dead and 1,563 missing off Libya. Around 17,200 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya in 2023, it said.

Those who are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centres rife with abuses, including forced labour, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to U.N.-commissioned investigators.

The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.