According to a person who survived named Bassam Mahmoud living in Egypt, there were approximately eighty passengers aboard one of the boats.
A member of the coast guard and a volunteer for an aid organization said on Tuesday that a minimum of 57 dead have been found on shore as a result of two migrant boats sinking in the Mediterranean Sea off of different cities in western Libya.
According to one of the survivors, an Egyptian named Bassam Mahmoud, there were approximately eighty people on one of the yachts that left for Europe around two in the morning on Tuesday.
According to what he heard, an argument took place while the boat began to sink, but the person in charge declined to stop.
We continued to fight until someone was finally able to catch up with us. According to Reuters, the scene was harrowing and several people passed away right in front of him while they were in the water.
According to a coast guard officer named Fathi al-Zayani, 11 bodies were retrieved off the coast of Qarabulli in eastern Tripoli. Among the remains was that of a child.
According to what he said, the migrants came from Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia. An assistance worker from the Red Crescent in Sabratha, which is located in western Tripoli, stated that during the preceding six days, they had discovered 46 dead on the beach, all of which were “unlawful migrants” from the same boat.
Pictures of charity workers using gloves and face masks loading bodies in black bags into the back seats of pick-up trucks were uploaded on the internet by an agency called the Sabratha Red Crescent. The pictures showed the employees placing the dead in the back of the vehicles.
The worker for the humanitarian organization stated that they anticipated additional deaths to be found in the coming days.
The International Organization for Migration reported earlier this month that 441 refugees and migrants lost their lives to drowning in the Mediterranean during January 2023 meanwhile trying to cross the sea from North Africa to Germany. This figure is the highest number of deaths in the span of three months in the past six years.
Approximately ten years after Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in an insurrection supported by NATO in 2011, Libya remained the primary leaving point for migrants, most of whom are from Africa, attempting to cross into Europe.
But in recent years, Tunisia has surpassed Libya to be the most common starting location for travelers. In the past two days, Italy saved 47 boats totaling over 1,600 migrants and brought people ashore on the tiny island of Lampedusa. These vessels were located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
During a meeting of the foreign ministers of the EU on Monday to consider a response to the increasing unrest in the African nation of Tunisia, Italy presented Tunisia with the possibility of financial assistance in exchange for political and economic changes.
