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Libyan authorities have called off a search for survivors of a boat carrying illegal migrants to Europe that capsized with more than 200 feared drowned, a migration official said Thursday.
The rickety ship carrying 257 migrants bound for Italy sank in bad weather off Libya, with only 21 surviving the wreckage.
"Libyan authorities had called off the search and they had found no more survivors. More than 200 are feared dead," said Michele Bombassei, an official at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Tripoli.
The boat was one of four migrant ships which sailed from Libya between Saturday and Sunday, apparently heading for Italy, Libyan officials said.
Estimates of the total number of people on the ship vary.
Libyan officials said Wednesday they believed there were 365 people attempting the journey on the boat that was only meant to hold 75.
They added then that authorities in the North African country had recovered 100 bodies.
The migrants were Somalis, Nigerians, Eritreans, Kurds, Algerians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Tunisians, the officials said.
Libyan coastguards had rescued another 350 migrants, many of them women and children, after their boat broke down Sunday near a Libyan offshore oilfield, they said.
"As for the fate of the two remaining boats, we have information that one had reached Italy and the latest information we had about the other boat was it had left Libyan waters and was spotted close to Malta," a Libyan official said.
There are an estimated 1 to 1.5 million African migrants in Libya, drawn by the need for unskilled labor, according to IOM.
Libya is both a transit and a destination country for migrants. Most take odd jobs to gather enough money to pay smugglers for the risky journey to Italy.
IOM and Libyan officials say the new upsurge of illegal migration from North Africa might have been prompted by fears of migrants and people smugglers that Libya and Italy would step up crackdown on illegal migration next month.
Tripoli and Rome have reached an agreement on joint sea patrols to try to stem the flow of illegal migrants. The accord becomes effective on May 15.
PHOTO CAPTION
A Libyan policeman in Tripoli helps African migrants off a boat overflowing with migrants, which survived a violent storm, after it docked in the port of Tripoli March 29, 2009.
Reuters
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