Fifty-three migrants dead or missing after boat capsizes off Libya, IOM says

The UN agency says the incident raises 2026 route deaths or missing to at least 484

Bodies lie in body bags on the ground as security personnel and Red Crescent volunteers work around what they say is a discovered mass grave, in a location given as near Ajdabiya, Libya, in this picture released on Jan 16, 2026 and obtained from social media. Attorney General's Office - State Of Libya via Facebook/via REUTERS

Fifty-three migrants, including two babies, were dead or missing after a rubber boat carrying 55 people capsized off the coast of Libya, the International Organization for Migration said on Monday.

The boat departed from Zawiya on Thursday and then overturned off Zuwara on Friday, the IOM said in a statement, citing the survivors. Zawiya and Zuwara are coastal towns west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

"Only two Nigerian women were rescued during a search-and-rescue operation by Libyan authorities. One survivor reported losing her husband, while the other said she lost her two babies in the tragedy," the IOM said.

More than 1,300 migrants have gone missing in the Central Mediterranean in 2025, according to the UN agency.

In January alone, at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing in the area following multiple "invisible" shipwreck amid extreme weather, with hundreds more deaths believed to have gone unrecorded.

"The latest incident brings the number of migrants reported dead or missing on the route in 2026 to at least 484," the agency said.

In mid January, at least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a mass grave in eastern Libya, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, according to two security sources.

Another two security sources said two days after that, Libyan security authorities freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they were held captive in inhuman conditions.

Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Several states, including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone, urged Libya at a UN meeting in Geneva in November to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.