Sunday January 24th 2021
370 people on "Ocean Viking"
Italy lets ship with refugees dock
In just three days, the "Ocean Viking" rescues hundreds of refugees from the Mediterranean. And unlike in the past, no days-long odyssey begins with the search for a port. Italy lets the people ashore.
The aid ship "Ocean Viking" is allowed to bring more than 370 boat migrants rescued from distress at sea to Augusta in Sicily. This was announced by the operating organization SOS Mediterranee. Italy had assigned the crew to the port near Syracuse. According to the information, a heavily pregnant woman had already been flown to the island of Lampedusa by the Italian authorities. After that, there were still 373 people on board who had been rescued from Libya by four rubber dinghies in the past few days.
The crew had turned to Malta and Italy with a request for admission. The arrival is expected for tomorrow, Monday. The majority of those rescued are from Guinea, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Sierra Leone, it said. Among them are 131 unaccompanied minors, reported SOS Mediterranee.
A spokeswoman for the UN migration agency IOM, Safa Msehli, tweeted that at least 80 people had lost their lives in the central Mediterranean since the beginning of the year. Most recently, around 17 boat migrants drowned and dozens of survivors were brought back to Libya on Sunday.
After a long break, the "Ocean Viking" set sail from the French port of Marseille to the central Mediterranean on January 11th. Civil war has been raging in Libya for almost ten years. The country has become one of the most important transit areas for migrants en route to Europe.
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