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There are fears that dozens of refugees and migrants will drown after the capsizing of their boats off the coast of Libyan Mediterranean, according to aid agencies and officials.
Ayoub Qasim, spokesman for the Libyan coastguard, told the Associated Press news agency that two boats carrying about 300 people had sank about 120 km east of the capital, Tripoli, before adding that 134 had been saved.
However, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in an article published Thursday on Twitter that more than 150 people were reportedly drowned, while 145 others were rescued and returned to Libya after the incident .
Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for theAccording to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the survivors were rescued by local fishermen and brought back by the Libyan coastguard.
"We estimate that 150 migrants are potentially missing and have died at sea," he said. "Among the dead are women and children."
"The worst Mediterranean tragedy this year has just happened," said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said.
He called on European nations to resume rescue missions in the Mediterranean after a decision by the European Union, and called for an end to the detention of migrants in Libya. Safe ways out of the North African country are needed "before it's too late for many more desperate people," said Grandi.
I do not want anything except to return to my country, Sudan, to die
Sabah Youssef, survivor who lost her seven year old child
Qasim told the AFP news agency that most of the people rescued from the sea were from Ethiopia, while others were Palestinian and Sudanese.
Sabah Youssef from Sudan lost her seven-year-old child after the sinking of the boat. "I do not want anything, if it is not going back to my country, Sudan, to die there," Youssef said, who was saved, at the Reuters news agency.
Some of the survivors shared their trial at sea.
"In the afternoon, we left Libya to go to Italy, but an hour later, the ship began to sink and most of them sank," said AP survivor of Eritrea.
Another survivor from Eritrea added, "We escaped, no one could help us and no one came to save us, and we are in a big problem, so we need your help (from the international community)".
? Urgent: a tragic shipwreck may have occurred in the central Mediterranean.
Nearly 150 migrants are reported missing and another 145 are reportedly returned to Libyan shores.– IOM Libya (@IOM_Libya) July 25, 2019
Libya is one of the main starting points for migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and war in the Middle East and Africa, who are trying to reach Europe by boat via the Mediterranean.
Those who make the trip often travel in overcrowded and unsafe vessels.
Nearly 700 deaths have been recorded in the Mediterranean so far this year, according to at the IOMalmost half the 1,425 recorded in 2018.
"If the current trends continue this year, it will ensure that, for the sixth year in a row, more than 1,000 deaths in the Mediterranean will be recorded", Yaxley, the spokesperson for UNHCR, Al Jazeera said.
"This is a very dark stage, and it comes a few weeks after more than 50 people were killed in a detention center following an air strike in Tajoura. [need] for a change of approach of the situation in Libya and the Mediterranean ".
According to the UNHCR, about 6,000 refugees and migrants are being held in detention centers in Libya, while about 50,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers reside elsewhere in the country.
Bags containing bodies of dead migrants after the capsizing of their wooden boat are seen east of the capital Tripoli [Ayman al-Sahili/Reuters]
"Avoidable deaths"
The UN has repeatedly warned that this country of conflict-torn North Africa was not a safe place for migrants and refugees, and called for the release of those who were in detention centers.
He also urged the EU to abandon its help Libyan coastguards intercept and forcibly return captured persons while attempting to cross the country to Europe.
L & # 39; EU completed its naval patrols in the Mediterranean in March due to disagreements over how to divide people saved between EU member states.
Italy's far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, opposed the existing agreement, as most of the rescued migrants and refugees were brought to Italian ports.
Salvini, who is also the deputy prime minister of Italy, has banned charity rescue vessels from berthing in Italian ports, and threatened to inflict fines of tens of thousands of euros on the violators and seize their ships.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently criticized the approach of the EU "suffering "of migrants and refugees in Libya and the "death" of other people in the Mediterranean were "avoidable".
"Politicians would have you believe that the deaths of hundreds of people at sea and the suffering of thousands of refugees and migrants trapped in Libya, are the acceptable price of attempts to control migration, "said Sam Turner, Head of the MSF search and rescue mission in Libya, said in a statement Sunday.
"The cold reality is that, when they announce the end of the so-called" European migration crisis ", they knowingly ignore the humanitarian crisis that these policies perpetuate in Libya and at sea," he added.
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