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Two babies are among at least 53 people who died or went missing after an inflatable migrant boat sank off Libya, the UN migration agency said on Monday, the latest tragedy on the perilous route for those seeking a better life in Europe.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement that the boat carrying 55 African migrants set sail from the western Libyan town of Zawaiya shortly before midnight on Thursday. About six hours later, it began taking on water and capsized on Friday morning north of the town of Zuwar, it said.
Two Nigerian women survived the shipwreck and were rescued by the Libyan authorities, IOM said. One of them said that she had lost her husband, while the other reported that she had lost her two babies.
“Trafficking and smuggling networks continue to exploit migrants along the central Mediterranean route,” the UN agency said. The networks make money by using “unseaworthy boats” to transport migrants from chaos-hit Libya to European shores, it added.
The number of migrants reported dead or missing in 2026 on the central Mediterranean route now stands at 484, according to the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. The effects of Cyclone Harry in January made travel more dangerous for many.
Last year, more than 1,300 migrants died or went missing on that route, the IOM said.
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Libya has emerged in recent years as a dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even as the North African nation descended into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Human traffickers have profited from the chaos in Libya in recent years, smuggling migrants across the country’s long borders, which it shares with six nations. Migrants are usually forced to sail in overcrowded, ill-equipped vessels, including dinghies.
Those intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rape and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to UN investigators.
The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of detainees before the migrants are allowed to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats.
