By AFP
At least four people have been killed when two boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers capsized off Libya’s coast, according to the Libyan Red Crescent.
In a statement on Saturday, the organisation said the incident occurred off the coastal city of al-Khums on Thursday night.
It said the first boat was carrying 26 people from Bangladesh, four of whom died.
The second boat carried 69 people, including two Egyptians and dozens of Sudanese, the Red Crescent added, without specifying their fate. Eight of them were children, it said.
Al-Khums is a coastal city, some 118km (73 miles) east of the capital, Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants and asylum seekers fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe since the 2011 fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi during a NATO-backed uprising.
Pictures released by the Libyan Red Crescent showed a line of bodies in black plastic bags laid out on the floor, while the volunteers are seen providing first aid to the survivors.
Other pictures show the rescued people wrapped in thermal blankets sitting on the floor.
The statement added that coastguards and Al-Khums Port Security Agency participated in the rescue operation. Adding that the bodies were handed over to the relevant authorities based on instructions by the city’s public prosecution.
On Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that at least 42 migrants went missing and were presumed dead after a rubber boat sank near the Al Buri oilfield, an offshore facility north-northwest of the Libyan coast.
In mid-October, a group of 61 bodies of migrants were recovered on the coast west of Tripoli. In September, IOM said at least 50 people had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese refugees caught fire off Libya’s coast.
Several states, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone, urged Libya last week at a United Nations meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
