More than 100 feared dead off Libyan coast: Doctors Without Borders - Action News
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More than 100 feared dead off Libyan coast: Doctors Without Borders

Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday it fears that a boat packed with migrants sunk off the Libyan coast and that more than 100 people could be dead.

Many migrants leave Libya in unseaworthy boats in a bid to reach Europe

A rubber boat with migrants is seen some 24 nautical miles off the coast of Libya in the Mediterranean Sea on May 6, 2018. Doctors Without Borders fears a migrant boat similar to this one might have sunk this week, killing more than 100 people. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)

Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday it fears that a boat packed with migrants sunk off the Libyan coast with more than onehundred people dead.

"We have every reason to fear the worst that over 100 lives were lost and nobody will ever know for sure," the organizationsaid in a statement on Twitter.

The Libyan coast guard was not immediately available for comment.

Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees, many of whom try to reach Europe in unseaworthy boats.

A boat carrying about 250 people, mainly from Eritrea and other sub-Saharan Africa and Arab countries, capsized last month off the coast near Komas, east of the capital Tripoli.

Libyan coast guards and local fishermen rescued 134 people while about 115 were missing, bringing the death toll of Mediterranean migrants to over 600 this year.

That put 2019 on course to be the sixth year in a row with more than 1,000 deaths, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees said at the time.