Up to 30 migrants are feared dead, after the boat they were travelling in has capsized, in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya.
Up to 30 migrants are feared dead after a boat capsized in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast while some 77 were rescued by EU naval units from the sea.
Ships from an EU task force and Italy’s coast guard raced to the scene 35 nautical miles (65km) off the coast as survivors clung to the hull or swam.
The alert had been raised by a Luxembourg reconnaissance plane which saw the capsized boat.
“We estimate the dead to be between 20 and 30 people,” Captain Antonello de Renzis Sonnino, spokesman for the EU’s Sophia military operation to combat people smugglers in the region, told AFP news agency, as the rescue continued.
The Spanish frigate Reina Sofia, backed by the Italian coastguard, threw life floats and jackets to those in the water. The Italian navy rescued 562 migrants from a capsized boat on Wednesday.
Categories: Africa, Libya, Mediterranean Sea, World
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