Libya 'attractive' destination for illegal migrants

The ship that sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa carrying 500 Eritrean and Somali migrants embarked from the Libyan coastline.

The BBC's Rana Jawad, reporting from Tripoli, says Libya is an attractive destination for migrants, with the tip of Europe visible from its shores on a clear day.

But although Libya says it is working hard to better monitor the launch of such ships, our correspondent says the chaos in the country since the war means numbers are likely to rise.