A boat carrying 86 migrants from Libya sank in the Mediterranean Sea and only three passengers are known to have survived the shipwreck the day after an airstrike on a Libyan detention center killed at least 44 migrants, the U.N. migration agency said Thursday.
The International Organization for Migration said the boat sank late Wednesday off the Tunisian city of Zarzis and 82 of the migrants who had been on board were missing. Fishermen pulled four men from the sinking boat, and one died overnight, Lorena Lando, the agency’s head in Tunisia, said.
The United Nations and aid groups have blamed the airstrike tragedy in part on the European Union’s policy of partnering with Libyan militias to prevent migrants from trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Critics of the EU’s program say it leaves migrants at the mercy of brutal traffickers or confined in detention facilities near front lines, often without adequate food and water. Migrants who survived late Tuesday’s airstrike said they were conscripted by a local militia to work in a weapons workshop.
