Up to 200 people are feared dead after two boats packed with mainly African migrants bound for Italy sank off the coast of Libya.
Reports say over 200 were rescued by the Libyan coast guard.
A security official in the western town of Zuwara, from where the overcrowded boats had set off, said there were around 400 people on board on one of the boats.
The first boat is said to have signaled for help on Thursday.The other boat with 400 migrants on board capsized later on.
Many appeared to have been trapped in the hold when it capsized.
By late in the evening, the Libyan coast guard rescued around 201, of which 147 were taken to a detention facility for migrants in Sabratha, west of Tripoli.
The migrants on board were from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco and Bangladesh.
Another local official and a journalist based in Zuwara confirmed the sinking but also had no information on casualties.The migrants on board
were from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco and Bangladesh, the security official said.
Zuwara, Libya’s most western town located near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers shipping migrants to Italy.
Cross-border smuggler networks exploit the country’s lawlessness and chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt or nationals of sub-Saharan countries via Niger, Sudan and Chad.
More than 2,300 people have died so far this year in attempts to reach Europe by sea, compared with 3,279 in the past 12 months, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
It comes as thousands of migrants and refugees a day are travelling between Greece to Hungary as they seek a better life in the European Union.
