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More than 100 migrants have been missing after the sinking of their boat off the coast of Libya, which could be the worst tragedy in the Mediterranean this year, aid agencies said Thursday.
"The sinking took place off the city of Khoms", a hundred kilometers from Tripoli, said Safa Msehli, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Libya.
Libyan coastguards rescued around 145 migrants, and survivors said about 150 people were still missing, she said.
Libyan navy spokesman General Ayoub Kacem said that "134 migrants have been saved and one body found, while another 115 are still missing".
"A wooden boat carrying about 250 people, including women and children, sank about five nautical miles from the coast, according to the testimony of the migrants who survived," Kacem said in a statement.
The charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that 250 migrants were still missing.
The migrants had apparently gone to sea aboard three boats moored together, said by telephone Julien Raickman, head of the MSF mission to AFP.
He added that the survivors had reported the presence of nearly 400 people on board.
Kacem said most of the rescued migrants came from Ethiopia, while others were Palestinian and Sudanese. The coast guards were waiting for the authorities to provide them with housing.
The head of the United Nations refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, tweeted that it was "the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year".
"The restoration of rescue operations at sea, the end of the detention of refugees and migrants in Libya, the multiplication of safe escape routes to exit Libya must take place NOW, before it is too late for many desperate people, "he added.
The capsizing occurred only a few weeks after the death of 68 migrants when a boat bound for Italy sank off Tunisia.
This vessel, filled mostly with African migrants, turned around shortly after her departure from the Libyan town of Zuwara, west of Tripoli, with the aim of reaching Italy.
Libya, wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed President Moamer Kadhafi, has long been an important means of transit for migrants, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, who are desperate to reach Europe.
The humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee announced Sunday that it has relaunched relief operations off Libya seven months after the abandonment of its operations, as European ports refused to accept migrants.
Ocean Viking, Norwegian pavilion, "will carry out search and rescue activities in the central Mediterranean" for SOS Mediterranee and MSF, the group said in a statement.
According to him, the Libyan exodus was "one of the most perilous maritime pbadages in the world".
After nearly three years of operations in which it saved some 30,000 migrants, Aquarius was forced to cease operations because of what the group described as obstruction from some European countries.
The populist-dominated Italian government has become particularly opposed to the acceptance of undocumented migrants on its territory.
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