“Another tragedy”: Doctors Without Borders: Nearly 100 migrants died in the Mediterranean

Doctors Without Borders and a UN official reported that 100 migrants died in international waters after leaving Libya on an overcrowded boat.

About 100 migrants have died in international waters after leaving Libya on an overcrowded boat, according to a non-governmental organization and a United Nations official.

Doctors Without Borders said that the commercial tanker "Alegria 1" rescued four people on a rubber boat in the Mediterranean in the early hours of Saturday morning.

"We know from our initial contact with Allegria 1 that survivors reported staying at sea for at least four days on a boat carrying about 100 people," the organization added in a tweet.

According to a record of conversations with the tanker seen by Agence France-Presse, the tanker said that "about 96 people died in the waters."

"More than 90 people have died in yet another tragedy in the Mediterranean," UN High Commissioner Filippo Grandi said on Sunday in a tweet.

"Europe has proven its ability to host 4 million refugees from Ukraine generously and effectively," he added.

"It must now urgently consider how to extend this to other refugees and migrants who knock on its doors in distress," Grandi added.

Meanwhile, MSF stressed that those rescued on Saturday "need urgent protection and care".

She noted that "no survivors should be returned to a place where they face detention, abuse and ill-treatment. Libya is not a safe place."

Libya, wracked by a decade of conflict and chaos, has become a major departure point for African and Asian migrants trying to reach Europe.

Migrants often endure appalling conditions in Libya before heading north on overcrowded, unseaworthy boats that often sink or get into trouble.

The European Union has been criticized for its close cooperation with the Libyan coast guard to reduce the number of migrants arriving on European shores.

Many of them, upon return to Libya, face further horrific abuses in detention centres.

Before this tragedy, the United Nations International Organization for Migration recorded 367 deaths in the Mediterranean so far this year, after recording 2,048 deaths in 2021.