The Ocean Viking, an ambulance ship chartered by SOS Méditerranée, rescued 95 migrants aboard an "
overloaded pneumatic
" boat off Libya on Wednesday January 25, announced the humanitarian NGO, which fears at least four missing.
According to the survivors, at least four people fell into the water before this rescue operation, triggered after an alert from a patrol plane from the German humanitarian NGO Sea-Watch.
The SOS Méditerranée teams searched for them for hours, in vain.
1,377 migrants missing in the central Mediterranean
The NGO, whose headquarters is in Marseille, regrets in passing that the "
two Libyan patrol boats in the area (have) left without responding to (their) requests for support in the search for missing persons
".
The central Mediterranean is the most dangerous migration route in the world, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The UN agency estimates that in 2022, 1,377 migrants disappeared there.