At least 40 people drowned and about 100 are missing after a boat carrying illegal immigrants from Libya to Italy capsized, an Egyptian security official said on Monday.
Forty bodies have been recovered after the boat sank shortly after leaving the port of Zuwarah, about 100km west of Tripoli, on June 7, the official said, citing a report from the Egyptian embassy in Libya.
An Egyptian and a Bangladeshi man are the only passengers known to have survived, with the Egyptian survivor saying that about 150 people were on the boat, including 50 Egyptians from the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, when it sank.
The Egyptian, named as Wael Nagui Abdel Mutagali, was pulled from the Mediterranean by a passing boat and returned to Libya.
The embassy report quoted him as saying that the Egyptians had each paid $2 000 to an Egyptian living in Libya to be taken to Italy.
Libyan authorities have been unable to identify most of the dead because of their decomposed state, although Abdel Mutagali said that most of the non-Egyptian migrants were from Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh.
Italian shores, especially the small island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, are a favourite destination for immigrants making the perilous crossing from Libya and other parts of North Africa in the hope of a new life in Europe. — AFP
