Nearly 400 migrants intercepted and returned to Libya within 24 hours

About 400 migrants were intercepted on the high seas by the Libyan Coast Guard in the last few hours and returned to this country at war despite being considered an "unsafe" port, security sources told Efe. They said the last 102 people - including 12 women and 20 children - were disembarked shortly after Thursday afternoon and taken to a detention centre after receiving first aid. "Around 300 more irregular migrants were disembarked during the day," the source added, without specifying in which detention centre they were held or the nationalities of those intercepted.  

According to statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the rate of departure of precarious boats with irregular migrants on board from the Libyan coast to Europe remains strong despite European vigilance in the Mediterranean and the hardening of the civil war, which in the last 14 months alone has claimed the lives of more than 1,800 people and forced more than 200,000 to leave their homes and become internally displaced persons. 

Last week alone, a total of 618 migrants were intercepted by Libyan patrol boats and returned in hot water, according to the figures of this UN body. The IOM estimates that some 5,500 migrants have been intercepted on the high seas in the first six months of this year and returned to Libya, compared to 9,225 in 2019. A total of 270 perished at sea and 992 disappeared the same year, compared to 98 dead and 149 missing according to their statistics in the first half of this year. 

Libya is a failed state, a victim of chaos and civil war, since in 2011 NATO contributed militarily to the victory of the various rebel militias over Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship. Since April 2019, when Marshal Jalifa Haftar, the guardian of the unrecognized Executive in the East and a strongman in the country, besieged the capital to take control from the National Accord Government supported by the UN in Tripoli (GNA), the fratricidal conflict has become a multinational confrontation totally privatized, without regular armies, fought by local militias and foreign Private Military Security Companies (PSMC).