Deadly journeys: Refugees, migrants risk everything to reach Europe

Crossing to Europe offers hope but exposes refugees to peril, as militia abuse persists in unsafe Libya.

The new year is less than two months in, but already more than 560 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Europe, making it on course to be one of the deadliest years on record. At least 500 of those were lost crossing from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria to a Europe that continues to attempt to force them back.

The stories of those lost at sea, many of them travelling on boats that offer little protection from the waves, reveal the extent of their suffering.

Earlier in February, 53 people, two of them babies, were reported to be dead or missing after their boat capsized off the coast of the Libyan town of Zuwara. Only two women, both Nigerian, were rescued.

A few weeks earlier, as a freak cyclone tore across the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds, possibly up to a thousand people, desperately trying to reach Europe, were believed to have lost their lives.