TIMELINE-Hundreds of migrants feared drowned off Libya
March 31 (Reuters) - More than 300 African migrants are feared to have drowned after their rickety boats sank off Libya, officials said on Tuesday.
Thousands of Africans are believed to have died attempting sea crossings to Europe in recent years, many of them trying to reach Spain or Italy in search of jobs.
Here are details of some recent major accidents involving migrants:
July 1/5, 2007 - Twenty African illegal migrants trying to sail to Italy drowned off the north African coast but 15 others were rescued by the Tunisian coastguard. The 35 had set sail from Libya trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa but ran into difficulties.
July 19, 2007 - More than 50 immigrants were lost at sea after their boat capsized south of the Canary Islands. About 100 Africans were trying to migrate to Europe in a long, open-topped wooden boat when it was hit by a huge wave. Coast guards rescued 48 people about 89 nautical miles southwest of Tenerife.
Oct. 28, 2007 - At least 14 migrants died off southern Italy in two separate incidents. Six died when their 23-metre-long vessel sank near the Calabrian coast. More than 113 others on board survived, swimming to shore. The second incident involved a shipwreck off Sicily in which another eight migrants died. March 3, 2008 - Three Bangladeshis and 17 Myanmar nationals starved or dehydrated to death after their wooden trawler stalled at sea on Feb. 20. At least 71 survivors were found adrift off Sri Lanka.
April 7/8, 2008 - Algerian coastguards recovered the bodies of 13 illegal migrants who drowned near the western coastal city of Oran,o ff Algeria's coast while trying to reach Europe.
May 12, 2008 - Forty-seven illegal migrants died of starvation and cold after the boat transporting them from Libya to Italy broke down. Sixteeen other migrants, who survived, had dumped the 47 bodies in the Mediterranean to prevent the boat from sinking.
July 1, 2008 - More than 35 migrants drowned when their rickety open wooden boat was wrecked off Gabon's capital, Libreville, after the bodies washed up on the city's seafront.
The victims carried identity papers from several West African countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo.
July 7, 2008 - At least 14 Nigerian immigrants were believed to have drowned after their small open boat overturned 75 miles (120 km) off Motril, near the Spanish coast. Twenty-three Nigerian immigrants were rescued.
July 13/14, 2008 - Fourteen African immigrants, including nine children, died from heat exposure trying to reach Spain by boat from North Africa. At least 34 people were rescued.
Feb. 15, 2009 - At least 21 North African migrants, many of them children, drowned as their overcrowded boat capsized near the Cocoteros beach off Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. About 9,000 migrants arrived in the Canaries in 2008.
March 29/31 - Twenty-three migrants were rescued from a boat with 365 migrants aboard. The boat, which sailed from Libya and was heading to Italy when it sank, had a capacity to carry 75 people. The boat was one of four migrant ships which sailed from Libya during the weekend.
Sources Reuters/IOM
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