This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
In Libya Migrants Face Brutal Choice — Deadly Land or Deadly Sea
More Than 80 Migrants Feared Drowned off Tunisia Coast
(about 3 hours later)
CAIRO (AP) — A boat from Libya carrying 86 migrants sank in the Mediterranean and left only three survivors, the authorities said Thursday, after an airstrike on a detention center near the Libyan capital killed dozens of others.
TUNIS — Dozens of African migrants are feared to have drowned after their boat capsized off the coast of Tunisia after setting of for Europe from Libya, a government source and the Tunisian Red Crescent said on Thursday.
The twin tragedies illustrate the almost unthinkable choice facing those who have reached the North Africa coast while seeking a better life in Europe: Risk a hazardous sea voyage in a flimsy, rubber-sided boat, or face being crammed into a detention center, where some of the migrants say they have been forced to assemble weapons for someone else’s war.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement more than 80 were feared drowned.
“I fled from the war, to come to this hell of Libya,” said one teenager from sub-Saharan Africa who suffered minor injuries in Tuesday night’s airstrike near Tripoli. “My days are dark here.”
Tunisian fishermen rescued four people but one later died in hospital, according to the United Nations agency.
The International Organization for Migration said the boat sank late Wednesday off the Tunisian city of Zarzis and 82 of the migrants who had been on board were missing. Fishermen pulled four men from the water, and one died overnight, said Lorena Lando, the agency’s head in Tunisia, said.
“The status quo cannot continue,” Vincent Cochetel, the agency’s special envoy for the Mediterranean, said in a statement.
The United Nations and aid groups blame the deaths in part on the policy of the European Union to partner with militias in war-torn Libya to prevent migrants from trying to cross the sea, saying the policy leaves migrants at the mercy of brutal traffickers or confined in detention facilities near front lines, often without adequate food and water.
“Nobody puts their lives and the lives of their families at risk on these desperate boat journeys unless they feel they have no other choice,” Mr. Cochetel said. “We need to provide people with meaningful alternatives that stops them from needing to step foot on a boat in the first place.”
Migrants who survived the airstrike said they were conscripted by a militia to work in a weapons workshop at the Tajoura detention center, which had been the focus of a United Nations warning in May after an earlier airstrike hit 100 meters, about 328 yards, away.
At least 65 migrants heading for Europe from Libya drowned last May when their boat capsized off Tunisia.
The wounded teenager said he fled war in his homeland at the age of 14, seeking to join fellow nationals who made it to Europe in rickety boats. But his journey was riddled with torture and abuse. By the time he reached the coast, Europe was no longer so welcoming and he was caught by the European Union-funded Libyan coast guard and spent 20 months in the detention center.
Libya’s west coast is a main departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe, though the numbers have dropped because of an Italian-led effort to disrupt smuggling networks and support the Libyan coast guard. Although the fighting in Libya has made the situation more difficult for people-smugglers, international aid officials have warned that it could also prompt more Libyans to flee their country.
For the last eight months, he labored without pay in the workshop adjacent to a hangar housing dozens of migrants, cleaning the militia’s weapons, from rifles to antiaircraft guns, said the youth, who refused to give his name or nationality for fear of reprisal from the militias. When the United Nations or other aid agencies visited, migrants told The Associated Press, the militia hid the weapons.
Libyans who are picked up by the country’s coast guard are routinely brought back to Libya and detained. The United Nations has pleaded with Libya’s government to free the detainees, some of whom have been locked up for years.
The decision to store weapons at the facility in Tajoura, east of Tripoli, may have made it a target for the self-styled Libyan National Army, which is at war with an array of militias allied with a weak, United Nations-recognized government in the capital.
In May, 108 migrants and refugees were sent to the Tajoura detention center near Tripoli, which was hit by airstrikes on Tuesday night, killing at least 53 people.
The Tripoli government has blamed the Libyan National Army and its foreign backers for the airstrike, which killed at least 44 and wounded more than 130. The army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, says it targeted a nearby militia position and denies striking the hangar where the migrants were being held. Michelle Bachelet, the United Nation’s human rights chief, said the attack might amount to a war crime.
Field Marshall Hifter, whose forces control much of eastern and southern Libya, has received support from Egypt, France, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Many of those who died in the airstrike Wednesday were crushed under debris as they slept. Pictures shared by the migrants show the hangar reduced to rubble littered with body parts. More than 48 hours afterward, relief workers were still removing bodies while the wounded lay on bloody mattresses in a courtyard, receiving medical aid.
The teen was sleeping when the munitions fell, obliterating the workshop and knocking him unconscious.
“When I woke up, I found myself inside the hospital,” he said. But the injuries to his back and leg were relatively minor and on Thursday he was back at Tajoura, along with hundreds of others who survived the airstrike. There are no plans yet to evacuate them.
In the aftermath of the airstrike, several of the detainees told visiting aid workers that guards fired on them as they tried to escape.
Nearly at the same time as the bombs hit, a man speaking English made a call for help from off the coast of the Libyan city of Zawiya. He was with at least 60 people, a third of them women and children, and their boat was taking on water quickly, according to the call log from Alarm Phone, an aid group that takes emergency phone calls from the Mediterranean.
He said the passengers are afraid of dying, and the boat is sinking quickly, but he could see the lights of the town still twinkling in the distance. The responder said their best hope was the Libyan coast guard but he needed to give a GPS location.
“I only have a little phone,” he replied.
The coast guard never went out that night.
On Thursday, the United Nations migration agency confirmed a boat sank off the Tunisian coast, maybe 60 miles away, with 86 people on board.
It was not immediately clear if that the boat was the source of the phone call, or if Thursday had brought yet another tragedy from Libya.
Salah Marghani, former Libyan justice minister and a human rights lawyer, said any European condemnation of the airstrike is hypocrisy. Led by Italy, the European Union has trained and funded the Libyan coast guard despite its record of abuses, and also relied upon militia-run detention centers to lock up migrants indefinitely, fueling instability.
The European Union has said repeatedly, including after the airstrike, that migrants should be evacuated to safe places, but has offered no specifics — or a haven for more than a handful from Libya.
“This policy intentionally turned Libya into a firewall to refugees who escaped war and famine in Africa,” Mr. Marghani said. “This firewall gives the refugees two choices: either to drown while trying to escape Europe, or being arrested in the high sea to be sent back to Libya.”
