At least 16 Pakistanis were killed over the weekend when their Europe-bound boat capsized off Zawiya in northern Libya, killing at least 16 of the 65 illegal immigrants.
Tuesday, PM Shehbaz Sharif gave instructions to the foreign affairs department to make it easier to identify the dying. The government claimed that a team from Tripoli had been “dispatched a staff” to a nearby hospital close to Marsa Dela port for the identification.
Soon Tuesday, the government disclosed that of the 63 Pakistanis on the boat, the body of 16 had been fished out and 37 rescued, while 10 were also missing. ” Three of the survivors are in Tripoli, being looked after by the ( Pakistani ) embassy”, the ministry said in a statement.
Less than a fortnight later, 50 Pakistanis died when a ship carrying 86 workers to Europe capsized off Morocco on January 16th. At least 300 Pakistanis had perished in a immigrant ship off Greece in June 2023, with Italy as their intended target before that.
In a travel alert, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency ( FIA ) has identified Libya as one of 15 transit countries used for human trafficking.
Hundreds of Pakistanis give criminals large sums of money each year to travel to Europe in order to find employment and return money to their families. Some people also travel these dangerous paths to avoid conflict and religious oppression.
According to Pakistani officials, human smugglers allegedly send migrants seeking unlawful entry into Europe to Libya, which is located about 300 kilometers from Italy. From that, they either transport them by ship to Europe or relocate them to Morocco’s and Mauritania’s coastal cities in north Africa.
On Monday, UN’s International Organisation for Migration ( IOM) said it was “deeply alarmed” by the dozens of migrants ‘ bodies found in mass graves in southeastern Libya. 28 sub-Saharan workers ‘ bodies were discovered by Libyan authorities in the southeast of Kufra, close to a location where they were reportedly tortured and detained two days prior.
The UN agency expressed surprise at the revelation of two large graves in Libya, some of which had been gunshot wounds, where hundreds of migrants had been buried. According to the report, the circumstances surrounding the migrants ‘ deaths and countries are unknown, and tombs were discovered following a police raid, in which thousands of workers were saved from traffickers.
