Eight people, including six children, were tragically killed in a refrigerated truck carrying a hundred migrants near Zwara, the city's security directorate in western Libya said.
"We have received information about the presence of a suspicious refrigerated truck east of Zoara. "We found 100 migrants from Africa and Asia inside, in a state of great fatigue and suffocation," said Hafen Muammar, a spokesman for the agency.
The truck was seized near the Mellitah gas plant, near the border with Tunisia, and the starting point for the Greenstream gas pipeline connecting Libya to Italy.
Immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, African and Arab countries were left behind by traffickers, awaiting their departure by boat for the Italian coast.