When the boat engine stopped

1Eina and Dani, volunteers from the NGO Proactiva Open Arms, on the deck of the rescue ship Astral.

It is Friday, it is in the morning and they are observing an area of ​​the central Mediterranean where there are several plants of Libyan oil companies.

The Astral - a rescue and surveillance vessel - set sail on February 1 from the port of Badalona, ​​in Spain, on its 81st mission with a crew of nine people.

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2A group of 45 migrants is adrift in international waters after fleeing Libya.

Since 2015, both the Astral and the Open Arms - flagship - have traveled 100,000 miles and rescued more than 61,000 people.

The inflatable boat is sighted by the humanitarian personnel of the Astral.

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3 An estimated 20,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean since 2014 after trying to reach a safe place to continue their lives.

In the picture, Gaizkane and Xabi, Open Arms volunteer sailors, ready the rescue boat with 50 life jackets to assist drifting migrants.

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4The woman who covers herself with a thermal blanket to protect herself from the cold and humidity is Afua, who fled Ivory Coast and traveled to sub-Saharan Africa to seek a decent life in Europe.

His story is reduced to the enumeration of sub-Saharan cartography: from Abidjan to Togo, then Benin.

It says Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, the desert crossing and Libya.

He manages to name them while drinking water and taking a bite of an energy bar.

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5Laura places the radio on Fatima moments before beginning to travel the five miles that separate the Astral from the sighted drifting boat.

Previously, wetsuits, their fins, helmets and masks have been fitted.

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6Laura begins to distribute life jackets to migrants while trying to calm them down to reduce the risk of the boat capsizing.

Inside the fragile boat, the situation is critical: the water reaches the knees of those who ride on the sides;

those who remain in the center have it to the waist.

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7Savaas, the captain of the Astral rescue ship, attempts to contact the Operations Center to report the shipwreck and request its transfer.

The Astral - on a monitoring mission - is not able to upload people, except in cases of extreme necessity such as a sinking.

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8Ali, of Ivorian origin, takes the rescue boat;

the engine failure has caused the wreck of the inflatable in international waters.

According to Safa Msehli, spokesperson for the World Organization for Migration (IOM), in recent weeks about 2,000 people have been intercepted at sea by coastal authorities, and returned to Libya.

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9Inside the rubber raft, rescuers find 45 migrants from the Gambia, the Ivory Coast and Guinea.

They were trying to flee Libya, but they have been adrift for three days, without food or water.

Europe considers Tripoli just another port, a safe harbor.

And Tripoli is, however, the capital of a country that has been dragging an internal war since the fall of the Muhamar Gaddafi regime.

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10For hours, the Astral Rescue Boat and the Rescue Boat keep watch alongside the 45 people in the drifting boat, waiting for the Italian Coast Guard to arrive.

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11Afua, in the center with a hat and thermal blanket, surrounded by the other 44 people from Gambia, Ivory Coast and Guinea rescued aboard an inflatable raft by the ship Astral.

The boat's engine stalled as it passed through the oil plants and the tides and winds did the rest.

They circumvented the Libyan Coast Guard and hoped that the same intangible forces would not return them, or condemn them.

But they spent three days adrift and despair seized them.

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12Dusk when the Italian Coast Guard collects the rescued to transfer them to Lampedusa, Italy.

Its crew members, clad in Personal Protective Equipment, carry out the maneuver to transfer the people from the rubber boat to the ship before the jealous custody of Òscar, Laura and Fátima.

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13Once everyone is up, they sail towards Lampedusa while the Astral crew regroups, cleans the vests, refills the rescue boat and prepares to continue assisting migrants and refugees at risk in the Central Mediterranean.

During the cleaning, they find a list of contacts, passport photos and a Libyan dinar, left in the rubber boat.

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