Bodies of at least 15 migrants wash ashore in Libya, navy says

BENGHAZI - The bodies of at least 15 migrants including a girl have washed ashore along Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast over the past week after their boat was believed to have capsized, security, navy and medical sources told Reuters on Saturday.

The vessel was carrying around 61 people, according to 10 survivors, a navy source said.

The bodies were recovered from several places along the coastline of Tobruk, a city near the Egyptian border, the sources added. Two security officials said the remains were badly decomposed and warned that more bodies could still be found.

Images posted on Facebook by the Tobruk Red Crescent showed volunteers in white hazmat suits recovering bodies from rocky shorelines and placing them into white plastic bags.

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

The oil-dependent Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work.

Separately, the Emergency ​Medicine and Support Centre in Khumas city, ​which operates under the health ministry in the capital Tripoli, said its medics treated 13 migrants after their boat capsized off the coast.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami and Ayman Werfali; writing by Ahmed Elumami, Editing by William Maclean)