A crowded vessel carrying 33 Sudanese migrants has capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tobruk, a coastal town in eastern Libya, leaving at least 17 passengers dead and nine others unaccounted for, United Nations officials confirmed in a statement released Thursday. Just seven people on board the ill-fated craft survived the disaster, the U.N. Refugee Agency shared via its social media platform X. Authorities have not yet released a definitive timeline for when the overturning occurred.
According to the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM), the survivors had been stranded adrift in open waters for multiple days before they were pulled from the sea, and a number of the fatalities were caused by starvation and dehydration in the days before the rescue. The boat departed Tobruk and was bound for Greece when it overturned roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of the Libyan city, the organization confirmed. Local rescue efforts were led by Libya’s national navy, the country’s coast guard, and the Libyan Red Crescent.
On Thursday, the Libyan Red Crescent published on-site photos from the rescue operation that showed emergency personnel moving multiple deceased victims sealed in black body bags. Medical details on the condition of the seven survivors have not been released to the public as of Thursday’s update.
For more than a decade, Libya has served as a primary departure and transit hub for thousands of migrants fleeing conflict, political instability, and extreme poverty across Africa and the Middle East. The nation descended into ongoing factional chaos following the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that removed and killed long-time authoritarian ruler Moammar Gadhafi, leaving central government weak and unable to regulate unregulated migrant smuggling operations along its long Mediterranean coastline.
This latest tragedy comes less than two weeks after another deadly shipwreck off Libya’s coast: earlier this month, more than 80 migrants were reported missing after their vessel capsized in the central Mediterranean. Data from IOM shows that 2026 is on track to be the deadliest year for Mediterranean migrant crossings since record-keeping began in 2014. In the first four months of the year, 765 people were confirmed dead along the dangerous Central Mediterranean route alone — a 150% jump in fatalities compared to the same period in 2025. IOM Director General Amy Pope told the Associated Press earlier this month that the agency has recorded a sharp rise in migrants from South Asia and the Horn of Africa — including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan — attempting the dangerous crossing to European shores in recent months.