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UN: Migrants who Tried to Cross Mediterranean Brought Back to Libya

FILE - Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
FILE - Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
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UN: Migrants who Tried to Cross Mediterranean Brought Back to Libya

FILE - Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
FILE - Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)

Nearly 500 migrants who tried to cross the central Mediterranean have been brought back to Libya, a spokesman for the UN migration agency said on Friday, two days after charity groups lost contact with the boat carrying them.

"Libya is an unsafe port where migrants should never be brought back," Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) wrote on Twitter.

He told Reuters there were 485 migrants and they docked in the Libyan port of Benghazi on Friday. No further details were provided to IOM at this stage.

Alarm Phone, a group that picks up calls from migrant vessels in distress, had no signs from the boat since Wednesday morning.

At the time, the boat was adrift, with no working engine, in high seas about 320 km (200 miles) north of Libya and more than 400 km away from Malta or Italy's southern island of Sicily.

The Italian Coast Guard reported on Thursday the rescue of 423 and 671 migrants in two separate operations in Italian search and rescue waters, and Alarm Phone said they were unrelated to the missing boat.

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Cyprus Leader Becomes First Foreign Dignitary to Visit Lebanon’s New President

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
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Cyprus Leader Becomes First Foreign Dignitary to Visit Lebanon’s New President

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has become the foreign head of state and first foreign dignitary to pay an official visit to Lebanon's new President Joseph Aoun.

Aoun, the former commander of the Lebanese army, was elected Thursday by the Lebanese parliament to fill a more than two-year vacuum in the presidency.

“I wanted to be the first to visit President Aoun and show, not in words but in actions that Cyprus stands by Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Christodoulides told reporters afterward.

They discussed energy, security, trade and shipping, his office said in a written statement.

Cyprus and Lebanon have had close relations for decades. In recent years the two countries have been involved in intense discussions over border control, as many Syrian refugees living in Lebanon — and an increasing number of Lebanese since the country's major economic crisis began in 2019 — sought to reach Cyprus by sea in smuggler boats.

Cyprus is less than 200 kilometers (130 miles) from the Lebanese capital Beirut and they share maritime borders in waters where undersea natural gas deposits are believed to lie.