CAIRO – A boat carrying dozens of migrants bound for Europe capsized in the Mediterranean Sea outside Libya and at least 45 people drowned or were missing and killed to death, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The capsizing, which this year marked the largest number of deaths in a single shipwreck off the coast of the North African country, happened on Monday when the engine exploded, UN officials said. The boat, carrying at least 82 migrants, then capsized.
Thirty-seven survivors, mostly from Senegal, Mali, Chad and Ghana, were rescued by local fishermen and later detained by Libyan officials on land, according to a joint statement from the International Organization for Migration and the UN refugee agency.
The survivors report that 45 people, including five children, drowned on the coast of the western city of Zuwara, the statement said.
Alarm Phone, an independent support group for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, said on Saturday it received a call from someone on a migrant ship “panicking and screaming” that passengers were about to die.
The migrants, including their five wives, two of whom were pregnant, said the boat engine stopped working and they had no food or water, the group said. Alarm phone said it had alerted Libyan, Maltese, Italian and Tunisian authorities and provided their relevant details about the boat.
It was not immediately clear that this was the same ship that Zuwara hijacked.
Alarm phone said the last time it was in contact with the boat was late Saturday.
“We encourage states to respond quickly to these incidents,” UN agencies said. “Delays recorded in recent months, and failures to help, are unacceptable and put lives at risk.”
The shipwreck was the latest maritime disaster in which migrants sought a better life in Europe. In June, a dozen people were missing and fear drowned from the coastal city of Zawiya, about 30 miles west of the capital Tripoli.
