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‘It is absolutely tragic that people have died on Europe’s doorsteps’
IOM spokeswoman SAFA MSEHLI speaks Ben Cowles following a week of refugee tragedies in Libya and the Mediterranean and the importance of NGO rescuers
IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli (left) and (right) IOM aid workers attend to refugees returned to Tripoli, Libya

LIBYA is a country in disarray, a war zone battled over by two opposing proxy factions, jihadists, strongmen and human traffickers.

In the last week, 30 migrants were gunned down in a smuggling warehouse in an apparent revenge attack for the killing of a human trafficker, and at least nine refugee boats in distress in the Mediterranean contacted the activist network Alarm Phone.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) — an inter-governmental institution affiliated to the United Nations — estimates the Libyan Coastguard has so far this year returned close to 4,000 people to the ravaged country.

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