Amnesty International on Thursday urged the EU to reconsider cooperation with Libya over “horrific abuses” of refugees and migrants in the North African country.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) announced that the Libyan Coast Guard intercepted a boat carrying 119 asylum seekers at sea.

One organizer has been reported missing after pro-democracy and anti-corruption activists held demonstrations in Benghazi yesterday. The protests were reportedly hijacked by pro Hafter supporters who flooded the demonstrations.

According to the Libyan Crime Monitoring Organisation, 30 activists have been arrested in the city of Al-Marj since 12 September, following a wave of protests that have swept the area.

A prominent human rights organisation on Thursday accused Libyan armed groups linked to the Tripoli-based government of using heavy weapons to disperse anti-corruption rallies last month in the capital and of detaining, torturing and forcibly disappearing protesters.

An Amnesty International report has blamed Malta for using “ever more despicable and illegal tactics” to turn away migrants and refugees from North Africa.

Libya has faced a tidal wave of internal conflict that has claimed thousands of lives since Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011.

Amnesty International pressed for the release of at least six protesters abducted when armed men, allegedly allied with Libya’s UN-recognised government, fired live ammunition to disperse a demonstration in the capital.

The Libyan Red Crescent has retrieved the bodies of 22 refugees and migrants off the coastal town of Zwara on Sunday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, likely to be from a shipwreck that took place last week.

At least 45 people including five children died earlier this week in the worst shipwreck reported so far this year off Libya’s coast, according to the United Nations.