Around 180 people are presumed to have died in the first major migrant boat disaster of 2017 in the Mediterranean, officials said Tuesday after interviewing a handful of survivors. They said their two-tier, wooden boat had left Libya on Friday with more than 180 people packed on board, all of them originally from East Africa. After five hours at sea, the engine cut out and the boat started to take on water. Siem Pilot, provided by the Norwegian coastguard, arrived in Trapani on Monday evening with the four survivors, four recovered corpses and 34 people rescued from another stricken migrant boat. Some 181,000 people were registered at Italian ports in 2016 while the UNHCR recorded more than 5,000 deaths and presumed deaths on all migrant routes across the Mediterranean.

Source: Libya Today January 17, 2017 19:42 UTC