Continue reading »]]> Hundreds of people were feared dead on Tuesday after high winds and heavy seas capsized boats carrying African migrants heading for Europe off the coast of Libya.

“A tragedy has happened off the Libyan coast with at least two boats going down … with obviously hundreds of people going down at sea,” Jean-Philippe Chauzy with the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, Switzerland, said Tuesday, citing diplomatic officials in Tripoli and Libyan officials.

The U.N. refugee agency, aware of the reports, said they came at the “beginning of the smuggling season in the Mediterranean.”

The vessels departed Sunday and were heading to southern Europe, Egypt’s Middle East News Agency reported Monday. Official casualty figures were not immediately available from Libyan authorities, but Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said only 20 people had been rescued including six Egyptians.

Reports of the incident varied widely. Egyptian state television said two fishing vessels carrying more than 600 people sank, while the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said one fishing boat went down with 257 people on board. Up to three boats sank, according to Chauzy.

Italian coast guards said an Italian tugboat working for an offshore oil companies in the Libyan seas picked up 350 people on Sunday and carried them to Libya with the help of the Italian military.

The migrants were believed to be headed for the Italian island of Lampedusa, where 37,000 landed last year, according to Chauzy, who said many African migrants converge on Libya en route to Europe.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said details remain sketchy about what happened, but at least one boat among several vessels leaving Libya for Italy went down and hundreds are reported missing.

It said the incident occurred around 18 miles off the Libyan coast. It said some Egyptian nationals were rescued and bodies were recovered. Those aboard included Africans from the northern and the sub-Saharan regions.

High Commissioner Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that the tragedy reflects the desperation of people to escape poverty and persecution.

“This tragic incident illustrates, once again, the dangers faced by people caught in mixed irregular movements of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean and elsewhere which every year cost thousands of lives,” the U.N. agency said.

Hundreds feared dead off coast of Libya

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Continue reading »]]> BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN — A blast targeting a bus carrying Lebanese soldiers went off near an entrance to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding 30 others, a high-ranking member of the country’s internal security forces told CNN.

The explosion occurred along the side of the road at the southern entrance to Tripoli, a Lebanese port city about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Beirut.

Last month, an explosion targeting a bus in a business district in central Tripoli killed at least 12 people and wounded 50. Among the dead were at least nine Lebanese soldiers, authorities said.

Deadly explosion rocks Lebanese city – CNN.com