By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 4 October 2016:
International rescuers today found the bodies of more than a score of migrants who had suffocated in the bottom of a wooden craft into which human traffickers had packed an estimated one thousand people.
AFP photographer Aris Messinis who was on board the British-flagged Astral, a rescue boat sent by a Spanish NGO, said that he counted 22 bodies and that there were still more dead in the hold. Italian naval vessels are reported to have taken over the bulk of the rescue from the 30-metre Astral.
Meanwhile, the Libyan coastguard pulled 30 bodies from the sea off the coast near Zuwara when they also detained 289 migrants.
In the last 24 hours international rescue craft have picked up over 6,250 people from at least a dozen rubber rafts and fishing boats.
