Two babies were among the dead or missing after an inflatable migrant boat sank off Libya, the U.N.’s migration agency said Monday, in another fatal incident on a route used by people trying to reach Europe.
The International Organization for Migration said the boat departed Libya’s western town of Zawaiya shortly before midnight on Thursday with 55 migrants on board. The IOM said that about six hours later the vessel began taking on water and capsized on Friday morning north of the town of Zuwara.
The IOM said two Nigerian women survived the shipwreck and were rescued by Libyan authorities. One of the women told the agency she lost her husband, while the other reported losing her two babies.
The IOM said the deaths and disappearances came amid what it called persistent and deadly risks faced by migrants and refugees attempting the crossing. It said the number of people reported dead or missing in 2026 on the central Mediterranean route now stands at 484.
The agency said last year saw more than 1,300 migrants dead or missing on the same route. It said these repeated incidents reflect the danger that migrants confront when they attempt the crossing on overcrowded, ill-equipped vessels.
In its statement, the IOM said trafficking and smuggling networks continue to exploit migrants along the central Mediterranean route. It said the networks make profits by using “unseaworthy boats” to move migrants from Libya—where instability has made the country a dominant transit point—to European shores.
The IOM said those networks have benefited from the chaos in Libya, where human traffickers have smuggled migrants across the country’s lengthy borders with six nations. It said people intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers where abuse is widespread, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture—practices the U.N.-commissioned investigators have said amount to crimes against humanity.
The IOM also said abuse often includes efforts to extort money from families of people held in Libya before the migrants are allowed to leave again on traffickers’ boats.