Dozens of bodies are are recovered every month from beaches all along Libya’s west coast. They are almost invariably migrants who would have died on the way to Europe. They are nameless and their deaths don’t even get reported.
Over the past month, Migrant Report tracked the number of bodies recovered by different branches of the Libyan Red Crescent (LRC), the main organisaiton involved in the recovery of these bodies from a 360km stretch of coast between Misurata and the border with Tunisia.
In July alone, the number stands at about 66. None of these deaths made the news. Difficult communication with volunteers and other sources scattered across this vast area makes it hard to pin down details, however, the number is a conservative estimate backed up by multiple sources or photographic evidence of the recovery.
The process has become a gruesome routine, says LRC President Maher Daoub. “This is happening on daily basis, we expect it everyday. It happens so often it has become normal, we are no longer surprised by bodies of migrants washing up,” he said.
Dr. Daoub was originally contacted to confirm information that 100 bodies were found along the coast in Tajoura, a port town 10kms west of Tripoli known as a departure point for migrants.
The LRC had no information on this report but could not deny it either. The alert was raised on July 14 by a spokesman for the capital’s anti-immigration department.
He said the bodies were believed to be of sub-Saharan migrants. They were taken to the morgue at the Tripoli Medical Centre. Officials there also could not confirm the information.
They asked for an official request for information but no reply was forthcoming at the time of writing. However, a source at the morgue said nobody was keeping track of the dead.
“The truth is the centre is swamped, not just with these bodies but with several other problems related to the living. It’s a question of priorities,” the source said.
According to the latest official July count by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 1,900 migrants died in the Mediterranean. But that count only really accounts for the people who die in international waters or are known to the European rescue mission.
Even the UNHCR, which is one of the few international organisations to still have some staff in Libya, could not confirm the incident involving 100 migrants, even though it had received the same information.
“We got the same information but it has been difficult to establish the facts. Most of our staff was transferred to Tunis in July of last year (when hostilities broke out in Tripoli between the two political factions that now control the country) and it has been very difficult to monitor the situation,” said Leo Dobbs, senior communications officer with the agency.
For those working on the ground, the situation is so chaotic that the notion of having a proper body count just sounds like a fancy idea.
“Respectfully, I feel that your question (about these 100 bodies) is an ignorant one, this happens every day in Libya, it’s hard to keep track of the numbers because it is so common,” the LRC President said, frustrated by the little attention his organisation’s work gets.
The work is grim, as well as relentless. “Some of the bodies we recover are of children and once I saw a dead pregnant woman. I cant bear looking at them at times,” said Malik Mohamed Marseet, who is responsible for the Tripoli area.
The latest recovery on July 26 came after volunteers were alerted to two bodies that had been buried in the sand on a beach in an area known as Al Attaya, in Garabulli, a major sending site for migrants crossing to Europe.
The corpses were discovered by locals who temporarily buried them in the sand before calling the police. They are most likely sub-Saharan Africans but little else is known about them, according to Marseet.
They were recovered together with the local police and sent to Tripoli for forensic tests. However, Marseet said they had no apparent signs of violence, when asked whether they could have been killed on the beach by smugglers.
“It’s also apparent that the bodies were in the water for about a week,” he said. He too expressed frustration at the little support the LRC gets for this work. He said they were dealing with a hidden problem which was actually the tip of the iceberg since many of the people who die at sea do not wash up on the shore.
In fact, the bodies are normally discovered throughout July were all in relatively small groups of between 2 and 11 bodies – even small dinghies usually carry at least 70 to 100 people.
One of the first groups of bodies recovered in July, is believed to have been from a shipwreck off Ben Gardane, a Tunisian fishing town on the border with Libya.
The bodies were found in Abu Kammash, a small village 30 km west of the port town and major migration hub of Zuwara.
A fisherman noticed the bodies in a lagoon by the sand. But on the same day, a civil protection source in Tunisia told Reuters that 28 bodies had been recovered from Ben Gardane.
Sources in Zuwara said the boat is likely to have sunk some three days earlier. The currents took some of the migrants to the Tunisian town while others ended up in Abu Kammash.
“Possibly the bodies that ended up in Abu Kammash were those of people who died first, we suspect they originally left from the Zuwara area and then the current took the bodies to Tunisia,” a coastguard source in Zuwara said.
The amount of bodies washed on Libyan shores poses practical challenges to the organisations taking charge of their recovery.
A spokesman for Tripoli’s anti immigration department said when hospital morgues are overwhelmed, the bodies are buried on the beaches where they are found.
Dr. Daoub said the LRC tries its best to give the migrants a proper burial but it is not always possible. “Most hospitals in different cities have been receiving large numbers of dead bodies over the past years and are overwhelmed. Moreover, some of the migrants are Christian and there is a shortage of appropriate burial sites for them,” he said.
The LRC has fundraised and built a cemetery for Christians in Tripoli. Sometimes, the religion is assumed based on the estimated nationality of the recovered migrants but in some cases, the bodies would have crosses or other religious ornaments indicating the faith of the deceased.
