The boat departed from the coastal town of Zawiya on Thursday and overturned off Zuwara on Friday, the IOM said in a statement, citing survivors. Zawiya and Zuwara are located 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 so far in 2025, according to the UN agency. In January alone, at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing following multiple “invisible” shipwrecks amid extreme weather conditions, 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 migrant bodies were discovered in a mass grave in eastern Libya, with up to 10 survivors showing signs of torture before being freed from captivity, according to two security sources.
Two additional security sources said that two days later Libyan authorities freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the southeastern town of Kufra, where they had been held in inhuman conditions.
Libya has become a key transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty toward Europe via perilous desert crossings and Mediterranean sea routes since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Several countries, including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone, urged Libya at a UN meeting in Geneva in November to shut down detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.