I’Ocean-Viking, an ambulance ship chartered by SOS Méditerranée, rescued 86 people in distress off the coast of Libya on Tuesday 27 June. On a makeshift boat, they were trying to reach Europe, the Marseille-based humanitarian NGO said in a statement. “The survivors, mostly from Gambia and Senegal, are suffering from dehydration, exhaustion and fuel burns”, tweeted SOS Mediterranean In the evening. They would be mostly minors and attempted this perilous crossing without being accompanied by their relatives.
The survivors were cared for by teams from SOS Méditerranée and the International Federation of the Red Cross on board theOcean-Viking. The Italian authorities have designated Bari as a safe port for the disembarkation of the survivors, which represents three days of navigation, regretted the NGO.
In early January, several international NGOs involved in rescue operations for migrants in the Mediterranean denounced the will of the far-right Italian government “to hinder the assistance to people in distress”. They pointed to the cross-effects of a decree obliging ships to surrender ” without delay “ to an Italian port after each rescue, and the usual assignment of very distant ports, reducing assistance capacities.
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 since the beginning of 2023, 1,724 migrants have disappeared there, compared to 1,417 for the whole of 2022.
In June, a shipwreck, presented as one of the most serious involving migrants in the Mediterranean, left at least 82 dead, but in the eastern Mediterranean. The IOM and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate that between 400 and 750 passengers were on the trawler, including women and children.