A boat carrying 35 people has capsized off the Libyan coast, the UN migration agency has said.<\/p>\n
The incident took place on Friday off the western Libyan city of Sabratha, a major launching point for the mainly African people making the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean, said the International Organization for Migration.<\/p>\n
The IOM said six bodies were pulled out of the water while 29 others were missing, presumed dead. It was not immediately clear what caused the wooden boat to capsize.<\/p>\n
The tragedy is the latest to involve people departing from north Africa to seek a better life in Europe. This past week alone, at least 53 have been reported dead or presumed dead off Libya, according to the IOM.<\/p>\n
\u201cDedicated search and rescue capacity and a safe disembarkation mechanism are urgently needed to prevent further deaths and suffering,\u201d the IOM said.<\/p>\n
Investigators commissioned by the UN\u2019s top human rights body found evidence of possible crimes against humanity committed in Libya against people detained in government-run detention centres and at the hands of human traffickers.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, more than 90 people in an overcrowded boat drowned in the Mediterranean Sea days after they left Libya, according to the Doctors Without Borders aid group.<\/p>\n
People regularly try to cross the Mediterranean from Libya in a desperate attempt to reach European shores. The country has emerged as the dominant transit point for those fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling people in across the oil-rich country\u2019s lengthy borders with six nations. Their \u201ccustomers\u201d are then typically packed into ill-equipped rubber boats and set off on risky sea voyages.<\/p>\n
At least 476 people died along the central Mediterranean route between 1 January and 11 April, according to the IOM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A boat carrying 35 people has capsized off the Libyan coast, the UN migration agency has said. The incident took place on Friday off the western Libyan city of Sabratha, a major launching point for the mainly African people making the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean, said the International Organization for Migration. The IOM said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1648,4899,6850,6369,9331,6083,9387,9304,5241,5257,6621,9505,2264,10840,13036,10954,5972,5050,5973,8719,65,6831,12085,7964,9528,5441,9431,6262,5465,5251,8869],"class_list":["post-20390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-aid","tag-chaos","tag-city","tag-dead","tag-detained","tag-detention","tag-died","tag-doctors","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-government","tag-human-rights","tag-humanity","tag-international","tag-international-organization-for-migrationimo","tag-libya","tag-mediterranean","tag-middle-east","tag-migration","tag-missing","tag-nations","tag-north","tag-north-africa","tag-oil","tag-poverty","tag-tragedy","tag-un","tag-war","tag-water"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}