At least 42 people are missing and presumed dead after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Libya last week, the UN’s migration agency said on Wednesday. Seven survivors have been located after the vessel’s engine failed in high waves at around dawn on Nov 3, several hours after it departed Zuwara, a coastal city northwestern Libya, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said. The survivors were stranded for six days and found after Libyan authorities carried out a rescue mission near al-Buri Oil Field on Saturday.
The rubber boat was said to have been carrying 47 men and two women. The missing include 29 Sudanese, eight Somalis, three Cameroon nationals, and two people from Nigeria. The IOM said it has provided urgent medical care, water and food to the survivors, who have been taken to Tripoli where they are said to be in a stable condition after suffering sunburn and skin irritation from seawater. Libya has been a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.
The country has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Last month, a migrant wooden boat that departed al-Zawiya in northwestern Libya capsized due to high waves, with the loss of 18 people, according to IOM. Another 64 people from Sudan, Bangladesh and Pakistan survived. The latest shipwreck adds to the rising death toll in the Central Mediterranean, where more than 1,000 people have died since the beginning of 2025, including over 500 lost off the coast of Libya, according to the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.
