158 illegal migrants rescued off Libyan coast

Libyan Coast Guard rescued 158 illegal migrants, including Bangladeshis, in two operations in the Mediterranean off the country’s western coast on Sunday.

In the first operation, a patrol boat found 73 migrants, including 25 women and eight children, and recovered bodies of a woman and a kid after their rubber boat capsized 14 miles north of Qarabulli town, east of Tripoli, reported The Libyan Observer yesterday, quoting the Libyan Navy as saying.

Around 25 migrants were still missing. The migrants on board the rubber boat were from Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.

In the second operation, the Coast Guard rescued 85 migrants, including five women and five children, after the motor of their boat broke down off Khoms city.

The migrants were from Sudan, Chad, Bangladesh, Egypt, Niger, Somalia, Burkina Faso, and Libya.

In a boat capsize on May 9, some 65 migrants, including 40 Bangladeshis, went missing in the Mediterranean.

According to the UN Migration Agency, as many as 443 migrants either died or went missing in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe by boats as of May 8 this year. The figures were 2,299 in 2018 and 3,139 in 2017.