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Migrants look at the sea from the deck of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms boat on July 2, 2018. A Spanish NGO said on June 30, 2018 it had rescued 59 migrants as they tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya and would dock in Barcelona in Spain after Italy and Malta refused access. The news comes two days after three babies were found dead and 100 more went missing in a shipwreck off Libya that Proactiva Open Arms, whose charity rescue boat was in the area, said could potentially have been avoided. Image Credit: AFP

Tripoli - Sixty-three migrants are missing after the inflatable boat they were on sunk off the coast of Libya, a spokesman for the country's navy told AFP, citing eyewitness accounts from survivors.

General Ayoub Kacem said that 41 migrants wearing life jackets were rescued. According to the survivors, there were 104 people on board the vessel, which sank off Garaboulli, east of Tripoli.

In addition to the 41 people rescued, a Libyan coastguard boat returned to Tripoli Monday with another 235 migrants, including 54 infants and 29 women, rescued in two other operations in the same area.

The boat's return to shore was delayed 24 hours due to a breakdown, Kacem said.

Including the latest shipwreck, some 170 migrants have gone missing in the Mediterranean between Friday and Sunday.

On Friday, three babies died off the coast of Libya while 100 people remained missing in another Mediterranean shipwreck.

Just 16 were rescued, all young men, while the missing included two babies and three children under the age of 12.