GENEVA — Not less than 73 Europe-bound migrants are lacking and presumed lifeless in a shipwreck off Libya, the United Nations migration company stated Wednesday.
The U.N. Worldwide Group for Migration stated in a press release that the wreck came about Tuesday, and that Libya authorities have retrieved not less than 11 our bodies.
Seven migrants survived the shipwreck and made it to Libyan shores, the U.N. stated, in “extraordinarily dire circumstances.” They had been taken to a hospital.
Tuesday’s shipwreck was the newest sea tragedy within the central Mediterranean, a key route for migrants.
Libya has lately emerged because the dominant transit level for migrants from Africa and the Center East making an attempt to make it to Europe. The oil-rich nation plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed rebellion that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.