Three babies dead and about 100 missing as Libyan inflatable sinks
The bodies of three babies were brought ashore in Libya on Friday, victims of a Mediterranean migrant shipwreck of which survivors said 100 people were still missing.
About 120 migrants were on board the inflatable craft when it got into difficulties, according to survivors taken to Al Hmidiya, east of the capital, Tripoli.
Sixteen people were rescued, while the missing included two babies and three children under the age of 12.
Survivors said the boat sank a few hours after its pre-dawn departure from Garaboulli, east of Tripoli, after an explosion on board. The engine then caught fire and the vessel began taking on water, they said.
The passengers included several Moroccan families, none of whom survived.
“When I saw the number of people on the boat, I refused to get on board, because we had been told that we would be 20 [passengers],” said survivor Amri Swileh, 26, from Yemen.
Showing his bruised arms, Mr Swileh said he was threatened by smugglers and forced on to the boat. “I lost all of my Yemeni friends who were with me. All five of them are missing,” he said.
While there were up to 15 women on board, the 16 rescued passengers were all young men, and from countries including Gambia, Zambia and Sudan.
The only bodies recovered were those of the three babies, while the rest of the dead were left at the scene due to “lack of resources”, a Libyan coastguard employee said.
Salem Al Qadhi, a coastguard captain, said he was shocked when he reached the site of the incident. “It was horrible to see,” he said.
Fishermen had spotted the vessel in difficulty and contacted the Libyan coastguard.
The Libyan branch of the United Nation’s migration agency said it was supporting the 16 traumatised survivors, noting that there had been other rescue operations off the coast.
An additional 345 migrants had been brought ashore in Tripoli and were receiving humanitarian assistance, the International Organisation for Migration wrote on Twitter.
Libyan authorities have been involved in the rescue of hundreds of migrants in recent days.
On June 18, five bodies were recovered and more than 100 people were saved after being shipwrecked off the Libyan coast.
Nearly 1,000 migrants were rescued on June 24 from several inflatable boats that had run into trouble trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
The latest sinking came after European Union leaders reached a deal aimed at sharing the responsibility for hosting migrants more fairly across the bloc.
The pact reached overnight includes a proposal to set up “disembarkation platforms” outside the EU as a way to reduce the number of people taking the perilous sea journey.
But the forces of Libyan forces leader Khalifa Haftar on Friday rejected any foreign military presence in the south of the country to stem migration.
Field Marshal Haftar heads the self-styled Libyan National Army and supports a parallel government in eastern Libya that challenges the authority of the country’s UN-backed unity government in Tripoli.