“Our Embassy in Tripoli has informed that a vessel carrying approximately 65 passengers capsized near the port of Marsa Dela, northwest of Zawiya city, Libya,” the FO said in a statement.

The statement added that the Pakistan Embassy in Tripoli had immediately dispatched a team to “Zawiya hospital to assist the local authorities in [the] identification of the deceased”.

“The embassy is also trying to ascertain further details of the Pakistani affectees,” it said.

“The Crisis Management Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mofa) has been activated to monitor the situation,” the FO said, and provided the following contact details for any query:

Pakistan representative, Tripoli

03052185882 (WhatsApp)

+218 913870577 (Cell)

+218 916425435 (WhatsApp)

Crisis Management Unit, Mofa, Islamabad

Phone No.: 051-9207887

Email: cmu1@mofa.gov.pk

On Thursday, the Alwahat district Security Directorate said in a statement that 19 bodies were discovered in a mass grave in a farm in Jikharra area, some 441 kilometres from Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, and said the deaths were related to smuggling activities.

Separately, the Libyan Red Crescent said on Facebook late on Thursday that its volunteers recovered the bodies of 10 migrants earlier in the day after their boat sank off Dila port in Zawiya — the same city referred to in the FO statement today.

It is pertinent to mention that last month, a similar incident in which a boat carrying 80 passengers capsized near Morocco. While the identities of at least 13 Pakistanis killed in the incident were confirmed, over 40 Pakistanis were reportedly murdered by African human traffickers on the boat and only 22 survived the tragedy.