SURVIVORS of a shipwreck off the cost of Libya have told refugee rights activists that armed men shot at their boat, causing the tragedy in which 45 people died on August 17.  

A rubber boat carrying 82 people left from the Libyan city of Zwara on August 15. Later that evening they contacted Alarm Phone, an activist network that runs a distress hotline for refugees.

Alarm Phone alerted the Libyan coastguard as well as the Maltese, Italian and Tunisian authorities and provided them with the boat’s GPS position. None of them launched a rescue.