Migrant charity says 11 bodies spotted off Libya

SOS Mediterranee said a monitoring plane operated by migrant-assistance NGOs spotted 11 decomposing bodies in the sea off Libya on Friday.

The charity said some of the bodies still had clothes on and others were kept afloat by tire inner tubes. The plane was operated by SOS Mediterranee and the Humanitarian Pilots Initiative.

The Italian coast guard said it had been notified and had informed Libyan authorities because the bodies were in Libya's search and rescue zone. It said the bodies were around 57 nautical miles from the Libyan coastal city of Zuwarah.

Every year, tens of thousands of migrants try to cross the Mediterranean from north Africa to southern European Union member states.

The International Organization for Migration said this week that 821 people died or went missing on the central Mediterranean route in the first four months of 2026, a 111 percent increase from 2025, even as arrivals on that route fell 46 percent to 8,577. It said more than half of the deaths were caused by severe weather in January.

The EU border agency Frontex said irregular border crossings into the European Union fell by 26 percent in 2025 from the previous year to almost 178,000.