As many as 61 migrants, including women and children, have drowned following a “tragic shipwreck” off the coast of Libya, said the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), CNN reported. The IOM’s Libya office said in a post on X that the boat had left the coastal city of Zuwara, situated west of the capital Tripoli and 60 km from the Tunisian border, with around 86 people on board. The UN agency said in the post: ”The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.”

Libya is a key transit point along the Central Mediterranean route. Every year, tens of thousands of people pour across Libya’s borders. Tragedies at sea are not uncommon. According to the latest figures released by UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 2,500 people have died or gone missing this year alone in the Central Mediterranean and “numbers in other parts of the world could be very high”, according to CNN.