On Sunday, the Libyan Coast Guard announced in a statement that it had rescued 197 migrants, as well as recovering the bodies of two migrants off the country’s western coast near Tripoli.
The migrants included women and children and came from Sudan, Mali, Chad, Guinea, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, and the Gambia. They were provided with assistance and transferred to the anti-illegal immigration department, the statement said.
Thousands of migrants, choose to cross the Mediterranean from Libya towards Europe in search of better lives. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that in 2020, 323 migrants died and 417 others went missing on the central Mediterranean route, while 11,891 migrants were rescued and returned to Libya.