UN: At least 120 migrants intercepted off Libya's coast

More than 120 Europe-bound migrants, including eight women and 28 children, were intercepted in Mediterranean Sea by Libya's coast guard, U.N. migration ncy said on Thursday.

International Organization for Migration tweeted that a vessel carrying migrants was stopped late on Wednesday off coast of rth African country and that migrants were returned to Libya.

“We reiterate that Libya is t a port of safety,” IOM said.

Safa Msehli, an IOM spokesperson in Libya, tweeted that 126 migrants from vessel were taken to detention centers inside Libya.

In years since 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Ghafi, war-torn Libya has emerged as dominant transit point for migrants hoping to get to Europe from Africa and Middle East. Smugglers often pack desperate families into ill-equipped rubber boats that stall and founder along perilous Central Mediterranean route. At least 20,000 people have died in those waters since 2014, according to IOM.

In recent years, EU has partnered with Libya’s coast guard and or local groups to try and halt dangerous sea crossings. Rights groups, however, say those policies leave migrants at mercy of armed groups or confined in squalid detention centers rife with abuses.

Separately, a Libyan health official tweeted that three of four bodies retrieved out of Mediterranean by Libyan rescue workers on Wednesday were of Egyptian children, d between 5 years and 8 years.

Amin Al-Hashemi, a spokesperson with health ministry said Thursday that children h drowned while sailing to Europe with ir parents, whose fate remains unkwn. Hashmeni's tweet included pictures of bodies of two boys and a girl, each lying on beach wrapped in blankets.