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Despite treacherous conditions at sea, record numbers of migrants are setting off from North Africa to reach the European Union. This weekend alone, nearly 5,600 people arrived on Italys southern coasts, reported InfoMigrant website.

More than 3,000 migrants arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the past two days alone, according to the Italian news agencyANSA.

According to official figures, a total of almost 27,000 boat migrants have now been registered by Italian authorities since the beginning of the year. This is more than four times the number for the same period last year, when 6,543 migrants managed to make their way to Italy using irregular means.

Meanwhile, eight people were reported to have died just before reaching their destination across the Mediterranean on Saturday. Their bodies were recovered by the Italian coast guard and brought to Lampedusa,ANSAreported.

Another 29 migrants drowned after setting off from Tunisia while still in Tunisian waters. Some estimates claim that number could still rise.

According to the UN Migration Agency (IOM), at least 2,836 deaths and disappearances have been documented on the Central Mediterranean route since 2021.

The island of Lampedusa is having the bear the brunt of the recent spike in irregular migration. Mayor Filippo Minnino called for a joint European mission in the Mediterranean to help resolve the situation:

Europe and Italy must realize that there is a state of emergency in the Mediterranean. Women, children and men continue to die, the local politician said.

Lampedusa is located less than 190 kilometers from the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax, which is one of the major departure points from North Africa in addition to Libya.

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Thousands of migrants reach Italy over weekend Libya Update News - Libya Update

About 650 migrants reached the Italian coast in a fishing boat, the latest in increasing attempts to reach the country.

The boat which was about 30 metres long and overloaded, arrived in the southern town of Roccella Ionica, the Italian news agency ANSAreported on Monday.

The report said the boat departed from Libya and its passengers had been travelling for five day.

The passengers were all men who came from Syria, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, ANSAsaid.

They reached the Calabrian town unaided, without the involvement of the coast guard or civilian sea rescuers.

Thousands of people arrived in Italy over the weekend. Dozens of others died in the attempt or went missing because their boats capsised.

Meanwhile, the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders brought 190 Mediterranean migrants ashore to the southern Italian city of Bari.

The groups Geo Barents vessel reached the port on the Adriatic coast previously assigned by Italian authorities late on Sunday afternoon, it said.

The ship picked up people on Friday from an unseaworthy wooden boat, including several unaccompanied minors.

However, many people repeatedly try to reach Lampedusa, Malta, Sicily or the Italian mainland by boats from Tunisia and Libya, crossing the central Mediterranean Sea in a potentially deadly journey.

According to official figures, Italy has already registered more than 21,000 boat migrants since the beginning of January, or more than three times the number of migrants seen in each of the two previous years, when about 6,000 per year arrived.

(dpa/NAN)

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650 migrants from Libya reach Italy by boat; 190 others rescued - Peoples Gazette

Three of the victims are females of age 22, 22, 30 and a 30 years old male, all traveling alone when they were arrested by immigration personnel in Yauri Local Government Area.

According to Bashir-Nuhu, it is a pity that in spite of our calls, talks and advice to people, especially youth on being careful in search of their daily meal, they still dont listen.

The victims were intercepted at Yauri border patrol on Wednesday and Friday as they were travelling from Lagos to Sokoto although they are grown up and fully matured.

Our officers became suspicious of them as they are being trafficked out to work in Libya. Some of them will be enslaved and mishandled and their organs will be harvested without their knowledge.

The male among them said he was going to Libya to secure a plumbing and bricklaying job.

I wonder upon all the opportunities that abound here in Nigeria, where it is even peaceful and secured, someone will go to Libya for work, in spite of the security challenges therein.

She said the officers applied Pact 10 and 11 of Immigration Act 2015, receive them and handed them over to NAPTIP.

The comptroller assured that the NIS would not allow any suspicious character or person profiting from human trafficking to pass its net in the state.

In their responses, the male victim confirmed that he was going to Libya to get a job.

I know someone in Libya whom I already contacted, and he said I should come, and my hope was to get job there for either plumbing or bricklaying, he said.

While receiving the victims, the Head of Operation of NAPTIP in the state, Alhaji Sadiq Atiku, said the agency would undertake thorough investigation of the matter.

We thank NIS for making our job easier and we are going to investigate thoroughly.

We have so far successfully arraigned some of the suspected traffickers who have connections with previous victims of trafficking as handed over to us by NIS, he said.

Atiku commended NIS for collaborating with the agency to eradicate human trafficking in the country.

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NIS hands over 4 Libya-bound victims of trafficking to NAPTIP - Pulse Nigeria

WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - The United States is "actively" working on re-establishing a diplomatic presence in Libya, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday, although he declined to provide an exact time on when the U.S. embassy can be reopened.

Libya has had little peace since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi and it split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, with the last major bout of conflict ending in 2020 with a ceasefire.

Washington shut its embassy in Tripoli in 2014 and moved to its mission to neighboring Tunis following intensifying violence between rival factions. U.S. Special Envoy for Libya, Richard Norland, has operated out of the Tunisian capital, and took occasional trips into Libya.

A September 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, since closed, killed four Americans including the then U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

"I can't give you a timetable other than to say that this is something we're very actively working on. I want to see us be able to re-establish an ongoing presence in Libya," Blinken said at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

Blinken did not provide any details on the active work he referred to.

Assistant Secretary Barbara Leaf, top diplomat for the Middle East and North Africa, is currently touring the region, traveling to Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, and Tunisia March 15-25.

In Libya, the State Department said, Leaf will meet with senior Libyan officials "to underscore U.S. support for UN-facilitated efforts to promote consensus leading to elections in 2023."

"There's also an important moment where through the work of the UN envoy, there may be, and I emphasize maybe, a path forward to moving Libya in a better direction including getting election for legitimate government and our diplomats are deeply engaged in that," Blinken added.

The OPEC member country has been locked in political stalemate since late 2021 when a scheduled election was canceled because of disputes over the rules and the eastern-based parliament, the House of Representatives, withdrew support from the interim government.

Peacemaking efforts have focused on getting the House of Representatives and the High State Council to agree on a constitutional basis for elections and on voting rules.

The United Nations' special envoy for Libya last month moved to take charge of a stalled political process to enable elections that are seen as the path to resolving years of conflict.

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Patricia Zengerle has reported from more than 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China. An award-winning Washington-based national security and foreign policy reporter who also has worked as an editor, Patricia has appeared on NPR, C-Span and other programs, spoken at the National Press Club and attended the Hoover Institution Media Roundtable. She is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence.

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Blinken says U.S. 'actively' working to re-establish diplomatic presence in Libya - Reuters

WASHINGTON The Biden administration is actively working to reestablish a diplomatic presence in Libya,Secretary of State Antony Blinken told senators Wednesday, nearly a decade after unrest in the Libyan capital forced American diplomats to withdraw.

The United States has lacked a diplomatic mission in the country since 2014, when more than 150 embassy personnel in Tripoli were evacuated under heavy military escort to neighboring Tunisia amid the budding Libyan civil war. Today, US diplomats assigned to Libya are based out of the Libya External Office in the compound of the US Embassy in Tunis.

Blinken declined to give a timetable for when the embassy might reopen but told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that the administration was pursuing it.

This is something we're very actively working on," Blinken said. "I want to see us be able to reestablish an ongoing presence in Libya."

In its fiscal year 2024 spending plan unveiled this month, the State Department requests funding for a potential Libya Diplomatic Travel Support Operations Facility and related operations for a potential US presence.

A senior US official previously told Al-Monitor that the administration is looking internally and as appropriate consulting with the Congress" about steps toward reopening. The official also hinted at more regular and more senior travel to Libya as security conditions allow.

This week, the State Department sent its top diplomat for the Middle East Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf to the country for a surprise visit with Libyan leaders including Gen. Khalifa Hifter and the head of Libya's presidency council,Mohammed al-Menfi. Leafs trip followsa visit from CIA director Bill Burns in January.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) expressed concern over the remote diplomacy in Wednesdays hearing, telling Blinken that without a permanent US presence in Libya, we're going to have a hard time protecting our equities and a lot of taxpayer dollars that have been spent there.

Murphy noted that several countries have reopened their embassies in the war-ravaged country, including Italy in 2017, France in 2021 and the United Kingdom in 2022. But returning diplomatic staff to Libya is less politically risky for the Europeans.

The September 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, brought increased scrutiny of US diplomatic outposts.The process of reopening the embassy would involve notifications to Congress, where Benghazi remains a politically charged issue.

If there were to be another attack on our embassy, then there'll be a lot of finger-pointing and blaming," saidTom Hill, a North Africa expert at the US Institute of Peace."Congress didn't want to be the ones to have to explain why they approved a new embassy in a country that was so dangerous."

A State Department spokesperson told Al-Monitor that the administration intends to resume diplomatic operations in Libya as soon as the conditions permit," adding that the process "entails careful logistical and security planning plus interagency coordination to meet security and legal requirements."

Talk of reopening the embassy comes as the civil war has wound down, the result of a 2020 UN-brokered ceasefire between the countrys warring factions. The UNs top diplomat for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, is pushing to hold presidential and legislative elections by the end of 2023.

In his testimony Wednesday, Blinken noted that US diplomats are helping move the electoral process forward but that engagement would obviously be a lot easier and more effective if they were on the ground day in and day out.

Ben Fishman, a former National Security Council director for North Africa and now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says theres no substitute for on-the-ground diplomacy.

The job of diplomats is to understand what's going on in the country, and you can only do that to a certain extent if you're in Tunis or Malta, Fishman said. But re-establishing a presence is far harder than taking it out especially after the political firestorm that was Benghazi.

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Biden admin 'actively' working to reopen US embassy in Libya - Al-Monitor