15 migrants drown in capsizing off Libya

CAIRO — At least 15 Africans drowned when their boat capsized Sunday off Libya, a U.N. spokeswoman said, the second shipwreck involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe in just over a week.

Safa Msehli, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said the dead were on a rubber boat carrying at least 110 migrants, who embarked from the Libyan coastal town of Zawiya on Friday.

The boat started to sink early Sunday and the Libyan coast guard managed to rescue at least 95 migrants, including six women and two children, she said.

Msehli said many of the survivors suffered from burns from engine fuel and hypothermia, with some taken to hospitals.

Sunday’s shipwreck was the latest along the Central Mediterranean migration route. At least 41 migrants were reported dead last week, part of a group of some 120 migrants on a dinghy that left the North African country on Feb. 18.

The humanitarian group Sea-Watch said its rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3 in the central Mediterranean had 363 rescued migrants aboard, from five distinct operations starting on Friday.

Libya has become the major transit point for African and Arab migrants hoping to reach Europe since the North African country plunged into civil war after a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.