19 June 2017, 22:04 GMT
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – More than 1,700 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe were rescued off the Libyan coast between June 8 and June 21, the office of International Migration Organization in Libya said Friday.
"In the past two weeks, 1,741 migrants have been rescued in Libyan waters," the IOM Libya office said on Twitter.
The overall number of migrants rescued since January has reached 10,034, an infographic published by the IOM Libya showed.
Since 2015, thousands of migrants fleeing from hostilities and extreme poverty in North Africa have been trying to get to the European Union and apply for asylum. Many of them have been trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea via Libya. According to the IOM, a total of 81,292 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe by sea in 2017 as of June 20. On June 15, yet another ship capsized off the Libyan coast.
