A BOAT carrying 250 Africans has sunk off the coast of Libya, with most passengers feared dead.
The Libyan navy said late last night only 26 people had been rescued after the boat went down near Tajoura, east of Tripoli.
Navy spokesman Ayub Qassem said: "There are so many bodies floating in the sea." He added the under-equipped coastguard had few resources to search for survivors.
Libya's coastguard mainly exists on paper and relies on fishing boats and tugs that it borrows from the oil ministry.
The spokesman said passengers on the capsized boat were mostly African.
The boat is believed to have been carrying migrants trying to make their way to European shores. Many have been streaming out of North Africa, mostly from lawless Libya, in rickety boats heading for Italy.
More than 100,000 have reached Italian shores this year, the Italian government said last week.
More than 100 African emigrants died in a similar boating accident in August.
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