Tripoli, Libya. Fifty-three migrants, including two babies, were dead or missing after a rubber boat carrying 55 people capsized off the Libyan coast, the International Organization for Migration said on Monday.
Boat departure and rescue
The IOM said the boat departed from Zawiya on Thursday and overturned off Zuwara on Friday, citing survivors. Zawiya and Zuwara are coastal towns west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The agency said only two Nigerian women were rescued during a search-and-rescue operation by Libyan authorities. One survivor reported losing her husband, while the other said she lost her two babies.
Central Mediterranean toll
More than 1,300 migrants have gone missing in the Central Mediterranean in 2025, according to the U.N. agency.
In January alone, at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing in the area following multiple “invisible” shipwreck amid extreme weather, with hundreds more deaths believed to have gone unrecorded.
The IOM said the latest incident brings the number of migrants reported dead or missing on the route in 2026 to at least 484.
Other incidents in Libya
In mid January, at least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a mass grave in eastern Libya, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, according to two security sources.
Two days after that, two security sources said Libyan security authorities freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they were held captive in inhuman conditions.
Libya’s role as a transit route
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
International calls on detention centres
Several states, including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone, urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva in November to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
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