![\"Sicilian-Boat-Sinking\"](\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Sicilian-Boat-Sinking.jpg\")
<\/a>\nA boat accident has killed 170 African migrants travelling to Tripoli in search for better way of life.<\/p>\n
According to Libyan coastguard officials, today a boat carrying 170 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa was feared lost at sea off the capital Tripoli.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking for 170 African passengers on a wooden boat that has foundered off the Guarakouzi area\u201d some 60 kilometres (35 miles) east of Tripoli, coastguard official Abdellatif Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few miles off the coast, we found the remains of a wooden boat which had had some 200 migrants on board,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe managed to save 16 people and recovered 15 bodies, but the search continues for some 170 people who disappeared at sea,\u201d Ibrahim told AFP.<\/p>\n
He said the coastguard was lacking in resources, and had only one patrol boat to search for the missing people.<\/p>\n
An AFP journalist reported seeing the body of a child who was nevertheless wearing a life-jacket.<\/p>\n
The coastguard official was unable to give any firm details of the nationalities of the victims or survivors, but added: \u201cIt seems that among them are Somalis and Eritreans.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Tunisian fishermen rescued 75 migrants who had been drifting at sea for five days after leaving Libya aboard an inflatable in an attempt to reach Italy.<\/p>\n
The migrants were in a state of extreme fatigue by the time they made landfall in Zarzis, in southern Tunisia, where emergency services took charge of them, an AFP correspondent reported.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Tunisian coastguards intercepted 90 African migrants whose makeshift boat heading from Libya for the Italian island of Lampedusa broke down off Zarzis.<\/p>\n
Would-be immigrants often attempt the crossing from Libya or Tunisia to Lampedusa in rickety boats.<\/p>\n
On August 12, EU border agency Frontex said the number of boat migrants arriving in Italy soared 500 percent in the first half of the year, already topping a 2011 record during the Arab Spring uprisings.<\/p>\n
The Warsaw-based agency said 78,300 people had arrived in the European Union by the end of July via the hazardous Mediterranean route from Libya to mainly Italy, but also Malta.<\/p>\n
\u201cLibya is highly unstable as it is now, and that means that the people-smuggling networks are flourishing,\u201d Frontex spokeswoman Izabella Cooper told AFP.
\n[AFP]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A boat accident has killed 170 African migrants travelling to Tripoli in search for better way of life. According to Libyan coastguard officials, today a boat carrying 170 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa was feared lost at sea off the capital Tripoli. \u201cWe are looking for 170 African passengers on a wooden boat that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Sicilian-Boat-Sinking.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-cv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}