Sixty-one migrants, including women and children, drowned following a shipwreck off Libya, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Libya said. IOM, in a post on social media platform X, quoted survivors as saying the boat, carrying around 86 people, departed the Libyan city of Zwara, about 110 km (68 miles) from the capital, Tripoli.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes,” IOM said. Deadly incidents this year included one in June, when a fishing boat packed with hundreds of migrants sank off Greece after departing from Tobruk, Libya. The voyage, which was supposed to end in Italy, resulted in 78 recorded deaths with the fate of 518 others unknown, according to an IOM report. Drowning was the main cause of death on migration routes globally in the first half of 2023, with 2,200 recorded fatalities in the period, according to the IOM report. The central Mediterranean route was the deadliest, accounting for a total of 1,727 deaths and disappearances along its shores in the period, the IOM report said.
