ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office (FO) on Saturday said the bodies of 12 Pakistanis, in the boat sinking incident of the Libyan coast, were recovered.
Spokesperson of the Foreign Office Dr Mohammad Faisal took to twitter to share the names and details of the Pakistanis who were on the capsized boat.
Eight bodies were recovered and identified while four were recovered but only identified by the deceased persons' friends and an identification document was yet to be found, Faisal wrote.
He further stated that documents of six individuals were found but bodies are yet to be recovered.
"[The] Pakistani Embassy [is] working around the clock," the FO spokesperson assured in a tweet.
The Pakistani embassy in Tripoli was actively following up on the boat sinking incident of the Libyan coast after the incident was reported a day earlier.
At least 90 people were feared dead in the Mediterranean Sea as they tried to undertake the treacherous journey in search of employment.
A boat carrying the migrants capsized off the coast of Zuwara in the early hours Friday, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesperson Olivia Headon confirmed to reporters in Geneva by phone from Tunis.
"At least 90 migrants are reported to have drowned, when a boat capsized off the coast of Libya this morning", the agency had added in a statement.
Two survivors from the disaster had swum to shore, while another was rescued by a fishing boat, it had stated.
The agency has repeatedly issued warnings over the extreme dangers facing migrants who try to reach Europe via the so-called central Mediterranean route, which connects Libya to Italy.
IOM had said on Friday that more than 6,600 migrants and refugees had already entered Europe by sea since the beginning of the year, with central Mediterranean route crossings to Italy accounting for nearly 65% of the entries.
16,000 drowned
Drownings in the Mediterranean began surging in 2013 as Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II began picking up speed, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Over the past five years, more than 16,000 people have died trying to make the perilous crossing to Europe, according to IOM numbers.
Excluding Friday's tragedy, 246 migrants and refugees have already died trying to cross the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, compared to 254 casualties during the first month of 2017.
Two hundred and eighteen of those deaths occurred on the central route in 2018, IOM said, while 28 happened on the western route that links North Africa to Spain.
Meanwhile, on the eastern Mediterranean route that connects Turkey and Greece, used by 1,089 so far this year, no fatalities have yet been recorded in 2018.
The EU last year reached controversial agreements with chaos-wracked Libya to stem the flow of migrants from that country, following a more comprehensive deal with Turkey in 2016, which sharply reduced the numbers crossing to Greece.
Casualties in the eastern Mediterranean have dropped dramatically since then.
In the 22 months since the deal with Turkey was reached in April 2016, fatalities on that route have fallen to an average of 6.75 per month, from 96.25 per month during the year prior to the agreement, IOM said.