Status: 08/26/2022 5:38 p.m
The rescue ship “Ocean Viking” rescued more than 200 people in distress in the Mediterranean Sea within a week. The “Open Arms Uno” received permission to call at a port in Sicily with 100 migrants on board.
The rescue ship “Ocean Viking” rescued more than 150 people in distress in the Mediterranean Sea in two days. The ship took on a total of 212 people this week, according to the French aid organization SOS Méditerrannée. Many of the rescued are dehydrated and exhausted.
Another rescue ship, the “Open Arms Uno”, received permission to call at the port of Messina in Sicily. Almost 100 refugees are on board the ship, the NGO Open Arms said. They had already been rescued the previous week.
Deadliest escape route in the world
The escape route from North Africa via the central Mediterranean is now considered the deadliest escape route in the world. According to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 918 people have died on this route this year, compared to 1,161 in the entire Mediterranean Sea.
According to IOM estimates, there were a total of 2,048 dead and missing in the Mediterranean last year, 1,553 of them in the central Mediterranean alone. In the meantime, only aid organizations with rescue ships are present in the Mediterranean. State missions no longer exist.
Every year, thousands dare to flee
Every year, thousands of people try to cross the Mediterranean Sea to escape conflict or poverty, mostly from Libya, whose coast is some 300 kilometers from Italy.
It was only on Wednesday that the “Geo Barents”, maintained by “Doctors Without Borders”, brought 106 refugees rescued in the Mediterranean ashore in Italy.