migration
Aid organizations save numerous people in the Mediterranean Sea
People who fled their homeland sit on board the rescue ship Ocean Viking. In the Maltese search and rescue zone, the crew took almost 60 people on board from an overcrowded wooden boat on their fifth mission in 36 hours. photo
© Jeremiah Gonzalez/AP/dpa
Exhausted and sometimes without life jackets, hundreds of people are drifting in overcrowded boats on the Mediterranean because they are looking for a better life in the EU. Civilian sea rescuers are in constant use.
The private aid organization SOS Méditerranée has saved other boat migrants from drowning in several operations in the central Mediterranean. The crew of the “Ocean Viking” have almost 470 rescued people on board, as the organization announced on Twitter. The volunteers got people on board from overcrowded wooden and rubber boats in the Maltese search and rescue zone. Many were physically exhausted, some had been out on the open sea without life jackets.
Meanwhile, the German organization Resqship was waiting for a safe harbor with its motorsailer “Nadir” and almost 60 rescued migrants on board. The civil sea rescuers warned in a tweet that their boat was not designed to take care of so many people. The “Nadir” had saved the people on Friday. Usually she reaches migrant boats in distress, alerts the authorities or other aid organizations with larger ships.
The “Geo Barents” from Doctors Without Borders and the newly put to sea “Humanity 1” from the German organization SOS Humanity are also currently underway. The migrants mostly cast off from the shores of North Africa for the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean to reach the EU, where they hope for a better life.