A six-month-old baby dies after the sinking of his boat in the Mediterranean

"Where is my baby? I don't know where my baby is! Help me! I've lost my baby!"

The cries of the mother, a six-month-old baby after being rescued in the middle of the Mediterranean, have marked the last mission of the Spanish ship

.

The woman looked at the camera and the rescuers disengaged in search of an answer, while the waters removed the debris from the floor of the boat where 117 people were traveling.

The fragile boat had been adrift for hours and fell apart when rescuers boarded it to try to put on the vests and masks.

Dozens of people fell into the water.

Five of them lost their lives in the shipwreck.

Little Joseph was finally rescued, but the crew doctors were unable to revive him.

The boy, born in Guinea Conakry, became with half a year of life the sixth fatality of a fateful day in which the

organization

carried out three rescues between the night of this Tuesday and that of this Wednesday.

During the operations, the ship managed to save 257 people who were trying to reach Europe through the Central Mediterranean, which bathes the coasts of Malta and Italy.

In addition to the six dead migrants, the Italian Coast Guard evacuated six other people who were treated urgently at a hospital in Malta.

The first operation of

mission 78

began late in the afternoon this Tuesday.

A dinghy with a deflated bow that had been adrift for more than 20 hours and carrying 88 people was rescued by the humanitarian vessel.

A few hours later, another radio notice warned of the presence of a boat 70 nautical miles (112 kilometers) off the Libyan coast.

However, the night darkened the waters and the search had to be postponed.

The next day, the two speedboats of the ship's rescue that went in search of the boat encountered a difficult situation: the floor of the inflatable in which little Joseph was traveling leaked.

While the rescuers were putting vests on the castaways, the floor of the boat gave of itself and sank.

Up to 111 people were able to get out of the water and reach the NGO boat safely, but five did not.

Among the victims was a mother with her child.

The little boy was able to reach his father's arms, but she could no longer do so, according to the NGO.

The Italian Coast Guard, after receiving the request for help, sent a helicopter to transport people in serious condition to a hospital in Malta.

They arrived hours later, when Wednesday night had already fallen, and six migrants were evacuated, including Joseph's mother with the body of her baby.

The night was long and the ship again received the alert from another vessel near the area where they were.

A new rescue saved the lives of another 64 migrants who joined those already on board.

The

now sailing with 257 rescued people, five bodies and all 19 crew members.

They are waiting for more people to be evacuated this Thursday by the Italian Coast Guard and await a safe port in which to disembark.

For Óscar Camps, director and founder of the NGO, numbers matter little "when you have your body by your side."

"We have everyone in a state of

with a shipwreck of this size, our own rescuers were quite affected," Camps told EL PAÍS.

Listen to the sound of the shipwreck we lived through yesterday.

The desperate cry of a mother in search of her 6-month-old baby, amid the chaos.

We recovered him from the sea in respiratory arrest, he went back, but hours later his small body did not resist.

She is the mother of Joseph💔 pic.twitter.com/mYzXLq1jxi

- Open Arms (@openarms_fund) November 12, 2020

All three operations were carried out in international waters, in the search and rescue zone attributed to Libya, a failed state at war.

Camps maintains "that the capacity of the Libyans is very limited" and "they have certain difficulties in reaching those distances."

In addition, he adds, "rarely do you get an answer from him."

Hours before the first rescue there was already an alert call to which no one attended.

The

organization

had posted on Twitter about four boats that were adrift at sea.

For the first, where more than 20 people were reported on board, there was no response from any authority.

Open Arms affirms that in that first shipwreck - almost 20 hours before the first rescue of the organization -, "13 people died".

In the end, only Libyan coast guards came.

The flow of migrants who jump into the sea to try to reach European shores has continued with the pandemic, although the numbers have experienced a drop compared to last year. This year, the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded 72,669 migrant arrivals across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, compared to 123,663 in 2019. Spain maintains the highest number of arrivals (31,409), followed by Italy (30,147) and Greece (14,400). Not all crossings are successful, according to the International Organization for Migration there have already been 795 deaths of people who tried to reach Europe. This number does not include the 492 deceased or missing that the organization has recorded on the Atlantic route that leads to the Canary Islands.