Two infants are amongst at the very least 53 folks lifeless or lacking after an inflatable migrant boat sank off Libya, the U.N. migration company stated on Monday (February 9, 2026), the most recent tragedy on a harmful route for these searching for a greater life in Europe.
The U.N.’s Worldwide Organisation for Migration (IOM) stated in an announcement that the boat with 55 African migrants on board departed Libya’s western city of Zawiya shortly earlier than midnight on Thursday (February 12, 2026). Round six hours later, it started taking over water and capsized on Friday (February 6, 2026) morning north of the city of Zuwara, the Organisation stated.
Two Nigerian ladies survived the shipwreck and had been rescued by Libyan authorities, IOM stated. One in all them stated she misplaced her husband, whereas the opposite reported shedding her two infants.
“Trafficking and smuggling networks proceed to take advantage of migrants alongside the central Mediterranean route,” the U.N. company stated. These networks make earnings by way of utilizing “unseaworthy boats” to sail migrants from the chaos-stricken Libya to European shores, it added.
Libya has lately emerged because the dominant transit level for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Center East, despite the fact that the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed rebellion that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The variety of migrants reported lifeless or lacking in 2026 on the central Mediterranean route now stands at 484, based on the IOM’s lacking migrants mission. Final 12 months noticed greater than 1,300 migrants lifeless or lacking on that route, IOM stated.
“These repeated incidents underscore the persistent and lethal dangers confronted by migrants and refugees making an attempt the harmful crossing,” it stated. Human traffickers lately have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants throughout the nation’s prolonged borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are often compelled to sail on crowded, ill-equipped vessels, together with rubber boats.
Those that are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centres rife with abuses, together with compelled labour, beatings, rapes, and torture — practices that quantity to crimes in opposition to humanity, based on U.N.-commissioned investigators.
The abuse typically accompanies efforts to extort cash from households of these held, earlier than the migrants are allowed to depart Libya on traffickers’ boats.
Revealed – February 09, 2026 06:07 pm IST