More than 1,500 migrants were intercepted in a week off Libya's west coast as they tried to reach Europe by sea, an NGO official and naval officer said.
Read also: Libya: 575 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean in one week
"
The Libyan Coast Guard has carried out several rescue operations for a week until (Wednesday) and rescued around 1,500 people,
" Adel el-Idrissi, of the NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC), told AFP.
On Wednesday alone, 240 African migrants were rescued off the city of Khoms, a port city 120 km east of Tripoli, Lieutenant-Colonel Mohamad Abdel Aali, commander of the star of the Coast Guard “Oubari”.
The migrants were on board two boats, he said.
We encountered difficulties getting on board the (migrants) "
from the first boat while the second group showed less opposition," he
says.
Read also: Extreme cold: migrants from Calais and Grande-Synthe in "extreme emergency" situation, warn associations
When migrants are intercepted off the Libyan coast, they often refuse to return to Libya, preferring to wait for ships chartered by European NGOs.
Veronica Alfonsi, a spokeswoman for the Spanish humanitarian ship
Open Arms
, confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that some 200 migrants had been returned to Libya.
"A Libyan patrol boat (...) took everyone on board: men, women and children brought back to Libya against their will, with the connivance of Europe",
said on Twitter Oscar Camps, founder of Open Arms, denouncing the
“returns”
to Libya of migrants
“from international waters”.
More than 1,200 illegals perished in 2020 in the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Despite persistent violence in Libya since the fall of Muammar Gadhafi's regime in 2011, the country remains an important transit point for those fleeing instability in other parts of Africa and the Middle East and seeking to reach the 'Europe.