Ninety people are feared to have drowned early Friday when a human smuggler’s boat capsized off the Libyan coast, the United Nations migration agency said.
Most of those aboard are believed to be from Pakistan. The country`s foreign ministry said 11 of its citizens had drowned.
Ten bodies washed ashore near the Libyan town of Zuwara, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokeswoman Olivia Headon told the Associated Press.
Headon, speaking by phone to reporters, said: “We are told that two survivors swam to shore, and one person was rescued by a fishing boat. We are working to get more details on the (capsizing) and where the survivors are so that we can assist them better.”
Headon said initial indications were that the boat became unbalanced. She said Pakistani nationals are increasingly attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy via Libya.
IOM figures released Friday say 6,624 migrants arrived in Europe by sea this year — about two-thirds of them arriving in Italy — and 246 either died or were missing.
The flow of migrants into Europe has slowed since 2015 after the European Union struck a deal with Turkey to limit the numbers entering the continent and closed the popular Balkan land route.
More than 1 million migrants entered the continent in 2015, many of them fleeing war and conflict in countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
At least five migrants were shot during a mass brawl between about 100 Eritreans and 30 Afghans in Calais, northern France, on Friday, according to media reports.
Migrants from a number of countries have gathered in the port town for years in the hopes of making the short journey over the English Channel to Britain.
Four teenage Eritreans are in hospital in critical condition after an Afghan fired shots while people were lining up for food, the BBC reported. It wasn`t immediately clear what sparked the violence.
Authorities dismantled a migrant camp nicknamed "the Jungle" on the outskirts of the town in 2016, but hundreds of migrants are still living in Calais.
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