Islamabad, April 15, 2025: At least four Pakistani nationals were confirmed among the 11 deceased in a tragic boat capsizing incident off the Harawa shoreline near Sirte, eastern Libya, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Foreign Office, in an official statement on Tuesday, reported that the Pakistani mission in Tripoli had confirmed the recovery of 11 bodies after a migrant vessel sank near Sirte. Four of the deceased were identified as Pakistanis through their national identity documents, while two bodies remain unidentified.
The Pakistani victims have been named as Zahid Mehmood from Gujranwala, and Sameer Ali, Syed Ali Hussain, and Asif Ali from Mandi Bahauddin.
The embassy in Tripoli is actively working to obtain further details about the incident and the affected Pakistani nationals. It remains in close coordination with local authorities, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has activated its Crisis Management Unit to monitor the situation.
This latest disaster follows a series of migrant boat tragedies involving Pakistani nationals in the Mediterranean region. On February 11, at least 16 Pakistanis lost their lives and 10 more went missing when another migrant boat capsized in the same waters near Libya. At that time, an embassy team dispatched to Zawiya city confirmed the toll after meeting with local officials and hospital authorities.
In January, over 40 Pakistanis perished in another incident when a boat carrying irregular migrants from Mauritania to Spain sank. That vessel, which departed Mauritania on January 2, had 86 people on board — 66 of them Pakistani. Moroccan authorities rescued 36 survivors from that wreckage.
Even earlier, more than 80 Pakistanis drowned in mid-December 2024 in a pair of boat accidents near Greece. These repeated tragedies underline the grave risks associated with irregular migration across the Mediterranean.
In response to the growing number of such incidents, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has intensified its crackdown on human smugglers and the officials accused of facilitating illegal migration.
To date, 35 officials from the Federal Investigation Agency have been dismissed, and former Director General Ahmad Ishaq Jahangir was removed for the agency’s reportedly slow pace in investigating the incidents and dismantling trafficking networks.
Amid heightened public awareness campaigns, Lahore’s Jamia Naeemia has issued a formal religious edict against illegal migration. The decree, issued by Dr Mufti Raghib Hussain Naeemi and Mufti Imran Hanfi, stated that using unlawful means to travel abroad is both illegal and a violation of Islamic teachings.
As the government and religious institutions join forces to discourage such perilous journeys, the latest tragedy in Libya serves as a grim reminder of the human cost of irregular migration.
