- US military drops ‘mother of all bombs on IS’ in Afghanistan
Only 23 men who clung to the rubber dinghy were rescued, when a boat carrying 120 Africans sank off Tripoli, the spokesman for the Libyan navy forces has said.
The 97 migrants now feared drowned included 15 women and five children.
“There were 120 African migrants, including 15 women and five children, on board when their rubber boat sank,’’ spokesman Ayoub Qasim told newsmen on Thursday, noting that the Libyan Coastguard rescued only the 23 migrants, who had clung to the boat.
“The number of the missing illegal migrants nears 97, including all the women and children on the boat.
“The 23 people who were rescued confirmed that the other migrants have drowned,’’ the official said.
Qasim added that those rescued were later transferred to a naval base in Tripioli where they received medical assistance.
The incident is the latest in a series of tragedies involving migrants desperate to enter Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.
Libya is the main departure point for Europe-bound migrants.
Many of them come from poor African countries, hoping for work in Europe.
The North African country has descended into chaos since the 2011 revolt that toppled long-time dictator Moamer Gaddafi.
The country has since turned into a major hub for migrants seeking to go to Europe through people-smuggling routes.
In the meantime, the US military says it has dropped a 21,600lb (9,800kg) bomb on a tunnel complex used by Islamic State militants in Afghanistan.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), known as “the mother of all bombs”, is the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used by the US in a conflict.
The Pentagon said it was dropped from a US aircraft in Nangarhar province.
The news came hours after the Pentagon admitted an air strike in Syria mistakenly killed 18 rebels.
It said a partnered force had mistakenly identified the target location as an IS position, but the strike on 11 April had killed rebels from the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is backed by Washington.
The strike in Afghanistan follows last week’s death of a US special forces soldier fighting IS in Nangarhar.
The GBU-43/B bomb was dropped in Achin district on Thursday evening local time, the Pentagon said. It is more than 9m (30 feet) in length.
It was first tested in 2003, but had not been deployed in combat before.
“We targeted a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters use to move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military advisers and Afghan forces in the area,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, using another name for IS.
He said necessary precautions were taken to prevent civilian casualties and “collateral damage”.
Achin district governor Esmail Shinwari told the BBC there were no civilian casualties because no civilians lived in the area.
Earlier Mr Shinwari told the AFP news agency that the explosion was the biggest he had ever seen and that huge flames “engulfed the area”.
The US has not yet confirmed the results of the strike in detail, but a local official told the BBC that many IS militants were killed, allegedly including the brother of a senior leader.
US President Donald Trump called it “another successful job”.
Additional report from BBC
