New tragedy in the Mediterranean. At least sixty people would have died on board an inflatable boat trying to reach Italy from the Libyan coast. This was explained by the survivors who were rescued this Wednesday by the humanitarian ship Ocean Viking, of the French SOS Mediterranée, who say that they were in the central Mediterranean for a week without receiving help, despite the fact that several planes and helicopters flew over they.
The boat left a week ago from the Libyan port of Az-Zawiyah, but on the third day of sailing the engine stopped working, which caused “his boat to be lost adrift without water or food for days “. It could be the same as Alarm Phone, an organization that receives calls from migrants in trouble, warned a few days ago that there were 75 people at risk. Among the dead would be women and children, who died of hunger, thirst or from burning fuel from the boat.
According to SOS Méditerranée, when they found them the situation was very complicated, of “extreme physical and mental vulnerability”, due to the harsh conditions they had endured during the last week that they had spent without groceries at sea and watching them die in front of their eyes fellow travelers, some of them family and friends.
All required medical attention, and two of them were found unconscious and in a critical condition and had to ask the Italian coast guard for help to be evacuated. They were taken to a hospital in Sicily by helicopter. Others were suffering from hypothermia and almost all were extremely dehydrated after drinking only a little sea water to stay alive.
“I found a man who has lost his wife and his one-and-a-half-year-old son – explained the spokesperson for the oenagé, Lucille Guenier-. The boy died in the first few days of sailing, the mother in the fourth. They were all Senegalese and had been in Libya for more than two years.”
After this complicated operation, the Ocean Viking made two more rescues, following the instructions of the Italian coast guard. In total, it carries 224 people on board, who are heading to the port of Ancona, 1,450 kilometers away, the port assigned by the Italian authorities to disembark.
This follows the policy of the Executive of Giorgia Meloni to choose distant ports to discourage the presence of oenagés in the Mediterranean, but, according to the organization, the long crossing only carries a risk of worsening the conditions of the survivors.
The International Organization for Migration warns that this tragedy shows that the relief system in the central Mediterranean is “grossly insufficient” and more must be done to save lives.
