The people were probably heading for Europe, hoping to settle there. On Saturday morning, the commercial tanker Alegria 1 rescued four people from a life raft in the Mediterranean Sea.
They told the Alegria 1 crew that they had been at sea for at least four days on a boat with nearly a hundred people on board. The tanker then noted in the log that “about 96 people died in the water,” MSF said.
The European Union has been criticized for its close cooperation with the Libyan coastguard to reduce the number of migrants arriving on European coasts. For example, the UN refugee chief wrote on Twitter in response to the deaths of the migrants: “Europe has proven to be able to receive 4 million refugees from Ukraine generously and effectively. It urgently needs to think now about how this could be applied to other refugees and migrants knocking on its doors in need.”
Prior to this latest tragedy, the UN International Organization for Migration had recorded 367 deaths in the Mediterranean this year. In 2021, 2048 did not survive the crossing.