TRIPOLI: Rescue
workers said yesterday they had plucked the bodies of 62 migrants from waters
off the Libyan coast a day after one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the
Mediterranean this year. About 145 migrants were rescued by the Libyan
coastguard Thursday after their overloaded boat went down east of the capital
near the port city of Khoms.

Aid agencies
initially feared that scores of migrants had drowned, with the number of
missing estimated at more than 110 by the International Organization for
Migration (OIM), and fishermen reported the waters were full of floating
bodies. "Our Red Crescent teams have pulled 62 migrants" from the
water since Thursday evening, the head of Libya's Red Crescent rescue unit Abdelmoneim
Abu Sbeih said on Friday.

"The bodies
are still floating onto the shore continuously, it's not possible to give a
total number," he added. Survivors reported there were some 400 people
aboard when it went down, according to global charity Doctors Without Borders
(MSF). One of the fishermen who was the first on the scene to save the
survivors recounted finding "bodies floating on the surface of the water
where the boat went down". The head of the UN refugee agency Filippo
Grandi called the wreck "the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this
year".

Libyan navy
spokesman General Ayoub Kacem said most of the rescued migrants were from
Eritrea, although Palestinians and Sudanese were also among the group waiting
to be taken on to reception centers. A member of the Libyan coast guard said
the outfit did not "have the means" to launch a high seas search and
would "have to wait for the sea to return the bodies so we can pick them
up". Local authorities were gathering and storing bodies of the victims
but were facing numerous problems and struggling to find burial places for
them, according to municipal source in Khoms.

'Traumatized'

UN chief Antonio
Guterres said he was "horrified" by the latest tragedy at sea.
"We need safe, legal routes for migrants and refugees. Every migrant
searching for a better life deserves safety and dignity," he tweeted. The
migrants had been apparently headed out to sea on three boats lashed together,
MSF mission chief Julien Raickman told AFP by telephone on Thursday.

One of the
survivors, Abdallah Osman, recounted how their boat started taking on water
about 90 minutes after setting out to sea hoping to reach Europe. "The
Egyptian captain decided to turn back," he said. Osman, a 28-year-old
Eritrean, said a passing ship saw that their boat was in distress but took no
action. MSF nurse Anne-Cecilia Kjaer met with survivors, including some who had
"swallowed a lot of sea water and had respiratory" problems.
"Many children could not swim, and even those who knew how to succumbed to
exhaustion," she said.

Kjaer said the
migrants were already "traumatized" from dangerous journeys across
deserts where they were "captured by traffickers, subjected to violence
and torture, and (then) saw their loved ones die at sea".  The capsize came only a few weeks after some
68 migrants died when an Italy-bound boat sank off Tunisia. Before the latest
shipwreck, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the OIM said
426 migrants had perished in the Mediterranean this year.

Amnesty
International lambasted the European Union over the latest deaths. "This
high number represents a new low for European leaders. They have done
everything they can to pull up the drawbridge to Europe," it said,
"yet people are still risking their lives to come to Europe". Libya,
which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed president
Muammar Gaddafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especially
from sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe. - AFP