Babies are among 53 dead or missing after a migrant boat sinks off Libya, UN says

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CAIRO (AP) — Two babies are among at least 53 people dead or missing after an inflatable migrant boat sank off Libya, the U.N. migration agency said on Monday, the latest tragedy on a dangerous route for those seeking a better life in Europe.

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement the boat with 55 African migrants on board departed Libya’s western town of Zawaiya shortly before midnight on Thursday. Around six hours later it began taking on water and capsized on Friday morning north of the town of Zuwara, the agency said.

Two Nigerian women survived the shipwreck and were rescued by Libyan authorities, IOM said. One of them said she lost her husband, while the other reported losing her two babies.

“Trafficking and smuggling networks continue to exploit migrants along the central Mediterranean route,” the U.N. agency said. These networks make profits through using “unseaworthy boats” to sail migrants from the chaos-stricken Libya to European shores, it added.

Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even though the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The number of migrants reported dead or missing in 2026 on the central Mediterranean route now stand at 484, according to the IOM’s missing migrants project. Last year saw more than 1,300 migrants dead or missing on that route, it said.

“These repeated incidents underscore the persistent and deadly risks faced by migrants and refugees attempting the dangerous crossing,” it said.

Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are usually forced to sail on crowded, ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats.

Those who are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to U.N.-commissioned investigators.

The abuse often accompanies efforts to extort money from families of those held, before the migrants are allowed to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats.