The Libyan coast guard on Thursday rescued 79 migrants who had been adrift in the Mediterranean Sea for two days, security authorities in the northwestern city of Sabratha said today.
The migrants were taken to a center affiliated with Tripoli’s illegal migration agency, officials said.
Human rights organizations consider that Libya “is not a safe country” for the return of people intercepted on the Central Mediterranean migratory route.
The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently published a report denouncing abuses and mistreatment in the detention centers of Tripoli, where thousands of people are arbitrarily detained.
A total of 15,791 migrants have been intercepted at sea this year and returned to Libya, according to the latest record on December 23 published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The migratory route from the central Mediterranean to Europe, which has Tunisia and Libya as its main departure points, claimed the lives of 955 people, including children, while another 1,316 remain missing today, in the deadliest year since 2017. , according to MSF.
This organization blames European policies of non-assistance and externalization of borders for the latest shipwreck off the Libyan coast, in mid-December, in which 61 immigrants died, mostly from Nigeria and Gambia.
In 2022, a total of 32,425 migrants were returned to Libya, according to data from the IOM, which estimates that more than 700,000 migrants of around 40 nationalities reside in this North African country.
Source: TSF
