TRIPOLI, Libya: Libyan authorities Wednesday started sending 350 irregular migrants to their home country Egypt, an immigration official said.
War-torn Libya has become a key entry point on North Africa’s Mediterranean coast for migrants, particularly from other parts of Africa, opting risky sea journeys in the hope of reaching Europe.
Rival Libyan administrations agreed last year on an anti-immigration body based in Tripoli to coordinate deportations of foreigners who are in the country illegally.
“The body to combat illegal immigration has started the process of deporting 350 Egyptian nationals who were in an irregular situation,” said Colonel Haytham Belgassem Ammar, migration agency spokesman, referring to the Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration, which is part of the interior ministry.
Already on Tuesday, the migration agency told media that 323 migrants, many of them women, had been sent back to Nigeria on flights from the capital Tripoli and the northwestern city of Benghazi.
“More expulsions are planned in the coming days,” Ammar said.
The International Organization for Migration said it organized two “voluntary humanitarian return” charter flights from Libya to Nigeria on Tuesday.
The IOM said in a statement on Thursday that there were a total of 327 migrants on the flights, more than two-thirds of whom were women and 21 of whom had health problems.
The UN agency says it has been implementing the scheme – brokering and financing travel for migrants and asylum seekers in Libya who want to leave for their countries of origin – since October 2015.
It says it has helped 77,000 migrants return home to some 48 countries of origin since the program began.
Libya sent 600 illegal migrants back to Egypt in November and another 650 in December.
All those sent by bus back to the Egyptian border on Wednesday were men, including several children, Ammar said.
In 2023, a total of 23,361 migrants of African or Asian nationality, mostly from Nigeria, were sent back to their homeland from Libya, he added.
“I was going to cross to Lampedusa in Italy when I was apprehended,” one of them, 16-year-old Ziyad Salama Abdellatif, told media.
