Home Diaspora More than 200 African migrants rescued off boats in Libya.

More than 200 African migrants rescued off boats in Libya.

by The Ghana HIT

Libya has rescued over 1,500 would-be migrants off its west coast last week only, a non-governmental organisation said. “The Libyan coastguard has conducted several rescue operations from a week ago until (Wednesday) and rescued about 1,500 people,” Adel al-Idrissi from the International Rescue Committee told AFP.

240 African migrants were rescued from 2 boats off the port region of Al-Khums on 10th February. “We encountered difficulties in getting the (migrants from the first boat) on board,” but the second group “showed less opposition,” he said.

Regardless of the unabated violence in Libya from 2011 when the Moamer Kadhafi’s regime failed, the nation remains a key transit point for migrants escaping lack of stability to other nations of Africa and the Middle East.
International agencies usually denounce the return to Libya of migrants intercepted at sea because of the chaotic situation in the country and unfavorable conditions in detention places.

On Wednesday, the spokeswoman for the Spanish aid ship Open Arms, Veronica Alfonsi, said that around 200 people had been returned to Libya.
“Men, women and children taken back to Libya against their will,” the charity’s founder Oscar Camps posted on Twitter. According, to the International Organization for Migration over 1,200 migrants passed away while crossing the Mediterranean in 2020.

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