The Ocean Viking, a rescue vessel at sea, on Wednesday collected 92 new people fleeing Libya in a distressed inflatable boat, bringing to 274 the total number of survivors now on board, announced the NGO SOS Mediterranean.
The survivors, including several women and children, were in a very weak state when they were rescued, adrift, near the oil platform of Sabratha, said the NGO.
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Tuesday morning, the crew of the ship chartered by SOS Mediterranean in partnership with Doctors Without Borders had already rescued 84 people including 21 unaccompanied minors from Bangladesh, Morocco and Somalia. Then, at the end of the day on Tuesday, he had collected 98 other people fleeing Libya, there too aboard an inflatable boat. Among the latter survivors were 14 unaccompanied minors, notably from Nigeria, West Africa or Sudan.
Since the summer of 2018, succeeding Italy which previously assumed this role, the Libyan coast guards are responsible by Europe for coordinating rescues in a vast "search and rescue zone" beyond their territorial waters. A mission that Libya, at war, is unable to carry out, according to SOS Mediterranean.
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The UN deems the situation "deeply worrying" in Libya, plunged into chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with multiple violations of the cease-fire that took effect in January and the arms embargo, she says. On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the Government of National Unity (GNA) announced the suspension of its participation in the work of a joint military commission in Geneva, under the aegis of the UN, following repeated violations of the truce. The strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, has been waging an offensive against Tripoli since April 2019, where the UN-recognized GNA sits. The clashes have killed more than 1,000 people while 140,000 have been displaced, according to the UN.
In 2019, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 1,283 known deaths in the Mediterranean, the central route between North Africa and Italy being the most deadly. At least 19,164 migrants have perished in the waves in the past five years.
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