CAIRO (AP) – Libya’s coast guard on Friday intercepted more than 80 migrants to Europe in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of the North African country, the UN migration agency said.
Migrants were returned to Libyan soil, said the International Organization for Migration. They are likely to be kept in dire conditions in detention centers for which Libya has become famous.
“This year, about 300 people, including women and children, were returned to the country and ended up in prison,” said IOM. “We reiterate that no one should be returned to Libya.”
The IOM posted photos on Twitter showing its employees talking to migrants, mostly Africans, on a Libyan pier.
This was the second interception outside Libya in a few days. Late Thursday, IOM said the Libyan navy returned 86 other migrants to Libya, including seven women and 19 children, who were previously intercepted in the Mediterranean.
In the years since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moammar Gadhafi, war-torn Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. Smugglers often crowd desperate families into ill-equipped rubber boats that stop and wreck along the dangerous Central Mediterranean route.
On Tuesday, a boat carrying migrants to Europe capsized in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Libya, and at least 43 people drowned. The tragedy marked the first maritime disaster in 2021, involving migrants in search of a better life in Europe. IOM quoted survivors as saying that the dead were all men from West African nations.
In recent years, the EU has partnered with the Libyan coastguard and other local groups to prevent these dangerous sea crossings. Human rights groups, however, say these policies leave migrants at the mercy of armed groups or confined in squalid and abused detention centers.
Also on Friday, SOS Mediterranee, tweeted that its rescue vessel Ocean Viking, found and rescued two rubber boats in distress, carrying 140 people, including women and children. Earlier, Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrants, tweeted that these two boats had taken off the coast of Libya.