Close to 600 may be dead on migrant ship from Libya

The United Nations has accused the Libyan government of complicity in a rising number of smuggling incidents, many involving workers from sub-Saharan Africa who had moved to Libya to find work before war broke out there in March.

International agencies say some recent migrants report being forced onto dangerously packed ships at gunpoint by Libyan soldiers.

A spokesman for Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi suggested that increased illegal immigration was the price European nations would pay for their military and political support of the rebels. "Because of the NATO aggression against our country and because our coastal border guard is being hit daily ... we are unable to deal with this situation and that is why Europe is being flooded with illegal immigration,” government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said.

“We cannot be the guards of Europe at this moment.”

The UN said the migrants, many from Somalia, were trapped below deck and drowning within sight of the shore of Tripoli. “We do know that there were some survivors who did know how to swim and managed to get to the beach but we believe that there were only a few,” UN refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

She said a Somali diplomat in Tripoli told the agency that 16 bodies, including those of two babies, had been retrieved since the sinking.

Migrants’ boats started leaving Libya for Europe again on 25 March, the day NATO took over military operations. About 14,800 since have made the gruelling journey across the Mediterranean in rickety ships run by smugglers who rarely provide enough food and water. At least 800 people had been lost at sea in three boat sinkings before the latest ship went down with 600 aboard off Tripoli on Friday.

“We know that the people running the boats are smugglers. But obviously you cannot have over 2,000 people leaving in a few short days without the government knowing and allowing it,” UN refugee agency spokeswoman Sybella Wilkes said. “That port of Tripoli is under government control.”

“Any boat that is leaving Libya should be considered, at first glance, as a boat in need of assistance,” Fleming said.

The International Organization for Migration also said some of those arriving on Lampedusa reported being forced onto boats at gunpoint by Libyan soldiers. The Italian government has said that Gaddafi is organizing migrant boats as retaliation against Europe.

“We know for sure that the stronger the military pressure ... the more difficult it will be for the regime to organize flows of refugees toward Europe as a means of reprisal,” Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said last month. He said that the rebel opposition “has indicated to us how and where the regime tries to organize this horrible trafficking.”