KOMAS: Fifty-five bodies have been recovered so far off the Libyan coast, an aid worker said on Saturday, after a wooden boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized on Thursday.
Search operations are continuing to find other missing migrants, a member of Libyan Red Crescent said by phone.
It was unclear how many people were on board and how many are still missing and feared to have been drowned after what the UN refugee agency UNHCR described as “the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year.”
Red Crescent member Abdulmenam Abu Sabay said the boat, which capsized near Komas, some 120 km east of Tripoli, was carrying 350 people, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Libyan navy on Thursday put the number of migrants on board at 250 and the UNHCR said up to 150 were feared dead.
Libyan coast guards and local fishermen rescued 134 migrants on Thursday.
“We do not have enough capability to carry out our operations. Citizens help us with their own vehicles,” Abu Sabay said.
“The bodies are still in bags in a hangar and we are waiting for security authorities’ permission to bury them,” he added. The hangar belongs to a department set up to fight illegal migration.
Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees, many of whom try to reach Europe in unseaworthy boats.
Meanwhile, Libya’s UN-recognised government said its forces struck a desert airbase on Friday that has been a key staging post for the transport of troops and supplies by eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Since April, the government has been battling an offensive against the capital by Haftar’s forces, who already control most of the far-flung oases and oilfields of the desert south as well as their eastern stronghold.
“The air force struck a gathering of mercenaries at the Al Jufra base, destroying a hangar for drones belonging to a hostile country,” on Friday night, government forces said on Facebook.
They said they also destroyed a munitions depot and hit an Ilyushin Il-76 military transport aircraft.
Pro-Haftar television channel Libya Al Hadath confirmed the base had been attacked but gave no details.
Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army said it carried out air strikes of its own against multiple targets in third city Misrata, from which many of the government’s best equipped and most seasoned fighters are drawn.
Since government forces weathered the initial assault by Haftar’s forces, the front lines have remained largely static, with both sides resorting to strikes using aircraft supplied by their foreign supporters to span the large distances between populated centres.
Despite repeated appeals by UN mediators, major powers have shown no sign they are ready to enforce an increasingly threadbare arms embargo on the North African country.
Nearly 1,100 people have been killed and more than 5,750 wounded since the Tripoli offensive began, according to World Health Organization figures. More than 100,000 civilians have fled their homes. — Reuters
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