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Lampedusa, Italy For Merhawi Tesfatsion, the shores of Libya representedthe stepping stone to a new life in Europe. But the haunted look in the 15-year-old's eyes attest to the horrors he experienced to reach them, traveling without any family from his home in Eritrea, then across the Sahara, and finally north to the Mediterranean.

From his home in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, he crossed into Ethiopia. After a short detention from which he escaped, he entered Sudan. We went through the desert by truck, but also by walking, he says.

Finally reaching southern Libya did not provide relief. "If the police or soldiers catch you, they send you back to the camp in Ethiopia," he says.

Merhawi is safe now, having crossed the Mediterranean with his friends Tumzgi Haile and Frezghi Msgna on a people-smugglers' boat. Together, they await their future on the island of Lampedusa, Italys southern-most outpost, which lies less than 200 nautical miles off the coast of North Africa.

But the same cannot be said for tens of thousands of other refugees and asylum seekers still stuck in an increasingly dangerous Libya, waiting to board frequently unseaworthy boats to Italy.

With most Western countries closing their embassies in Libya, and few journalists daring to set foot in an increasingly lawless land, refugees accounts provide a vital glimpse into what is happening there. But the tales they tell of murderous soldiers, rampant violence, and abusive smugglers suggest that the dangers they face in Libya could be as bad or worse than the perils they faced in their homelands.

Last year, a record 170,000 refugees flooded across the Mediterranean, traveling in large part out of Libya and arriving in Italy. In January, more than 3,500 refugees and migrants reached Italy from Libya, a 60 percent increase from January 2014. They come from all over Africa and the Middle East.

The Eritreans are fleeing a brutal regime which dragoons young men into military conscription and maintains a semi-permanent war footing with neighboring Ethiopia. Syrians and Iraqis are fleeing the war and atrocities committed by the self-described Islamic State, Palestinians the open prison that is Gaza, and West Africans the crushing poverty that has framed many of their lives.

The decision to trek across thousands of miles of desert and then clamber into a leaking former fishing boat or a fragile rubber dinghy may seem extreme. But for people who have had their houses destroyed by bombs or seen their families murdered by gunmen, there are few other options.

The vast majority of refugees make for Libya, where a power vacuum since the 2011 fall of dictator Muammar Qaddafi has enabled gangs of human traffickers to flourish.Libya, however, is spiraling ever further into chaos, with murderous Islamic State fighters making inroads in the east of the country and rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk locked in a standoff. Islamist militias and desert tribes, meanwhile, fight for control of oil and gas resources.

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For refugees, Libya proves perilous stepping stone to new life in Europe (+video)