Libyan Navy News

About 115 people are missing and feared to have drowned and another 134 were rescued by Libyan coast guards and local fishermen after a wooden boat carrying migrants capsized off Libya, a Libyan navy official said on Thursday.Earlier, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that up to 150 people were feared dead."The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred," UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said in a tweet.There were about 250 people on board, mainly from Eritrea and other sub-Saharan Africa and Arab countries, when the boat capsized off the coast near Komas, east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said.Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees…

At least 116 migrants are missing and another 132 were rescued by Libyan coast guards and local fishermen after a wooden boat capsized off the coast of Komas, a town east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said on Thursday.Qassem cited survivors as saying there had been more than 200 migrants on board the boat.Earlier, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that up to 150 people were feared dead in the shipwreck while another 150 were rescued. (Reuters, Reporting by Ahmed Elumami Writing by Lisa Barrington Editing by Frances Kerry)

Malta said on Friday it would take in 54 migrants rescued by an Italian charity boat off Libya this week, after Italy refused to let the vessel dock at one of its ports as it labours to shut down sea migration routes.However, in a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that is pitting EU governments against each other and against the non-governmental rescue boats, Malta said it would dispatch to Italy a similar number of migrants already on its territory.Malta and Italy have frequently been at loggerheads over who should receive migrants rescued in the Mediterranean and both have closed their ports to NGO rescue ship unless agreement is reached for those on board to be transferred to other countries.A German charity ship…

Libyan naval forces on Sunday seized a Liberian-flagged oil tanker and detained its mainly Filipino crew on suspicion of smuggling oil off the Abu Kammash area west of the capital Tripoli, a naval spokesman said. Libyan coast guards often seize tankers suspected of smuggling oil and gasoline off the coast that has become a haven for migrants and smugglers taking advantage of chaos that followed the 2011 fall of former leader Muammar Gaddafi. In the latest case, the Levane tanker with its crew of 20 members from the Philippines was seized on Monday afternoon by a patrol, naval spokesman Ayoub Qassem said. "The capacity of the tanker Levane is six million litres and it is a Greek-owned company tanker," Qassim said, adding that members of the crew were being questioned.

The crew of a speedboat labelled "Libyan Coast Guard" attacked a migrant boat packed with some 150 migrants, beating them with sticks and causing many to fall into the water and at least four to drown, humanitarian group Sea-Watch said on Friday. Rescuers recovered three more dead bodies on a different rubber boat and picked up a total 3,300 survivors from 24 different boats during the day, Italy's coast guard said. Germany-based Sea-Watch, one of several non-governmental organisations operating vessels off the coast of Libya, said the speedboat swooped in just as they were about to go to the aid of the overcrowded rubber boat in the early hours of Friday.

Libyan naval forces have seized a Sierra Leone-flagged oil tanker on suspicion of illegally entering Libyan waters in an attempt to smuggle gasoline, authorities said on Saturday. The vessel, the Captain Khayyam, was stopped in Libyan waters on Friday night 25 miles northwest of Zuwarah city, and was carrying 1.6 million litres of gasoline, said Ayoub Qassem, a spokesman for the naval forces allied to Tripoli's self-declared government. "The tanker was seized due to illegal entrance to Libyan waters without permission," Qassem said. He said more details would be announced when the tanker was docked in Tripoli. He said it was a sailing under a Sierre Leone flag with a crew of nine including nationals of Turkey, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan, including one woman.

A Libyan navy ship docked at Benghazi port was hit during heavy fighting on Monday between the army and Islamist fighters in Libya's second-largest city, residents said. A Reuters reporter could see smoke rising from the port area, to which the army had earlier moved heavy guns to attack positions of Islamist fighters. A security source said the ship was sinking but this could not immediately be confirmed. (Reporting by Feras Bosalum and Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Catherine Evans)

More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last week, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday. In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta's coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of nine survivors. The survivors said the traffickers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean. The migrants refused, leading to a confrontation that ended when traffickers rammed the ship carrying the migrants, causing it to sink, IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters in Geneva.

Libya's navy has blocked Baku, an oil tanker allegedly chartered by Royal Asset Management, from loading crude at an eastern port that has been held for months by armed protesters demanding more autonomy from Tripoli, Reuters reported. Due to a government blockade, the transport of oil from Libya is illegal. An attempt by protesters to get oil to world markets independently would be a major escalation of the obstruction that has slashed Libya's oil exports, the Reuters report said. According to Reuters’ AIS Live ship tracking, the tanker is traveling north towards Malta after sailing around Libya since the end of December. The vessel was outside Brega port and then Zawiya before heading to Es Sider.   Sources: Reuters, staff

The delegation led by Commodore Hassan Ali Bushnak, Chief of Staff of the Libyan Naval Force, forms part of a wider visit by the Libyan delegation to the Royal Navy in the UK to build relations, offer opportunities, and to help understand the enormous challenges Libya faces in creating a modern naval force. During their time at HMS Raleigh in Torpoint the visitors were able to see recruits undergoing their 10-week initial naval training course. The visitors were shown the facilities used to teach recruits how to safely handle and fire the SA80 rifle and first aid training.