Three rescues in just seven hours. The “Ocean Viking”, the ambulance ship of SOS Méditerranée, rescued 153 refugees on Friday in the central Mediterranean, in the Maltese search area, AFP learned this Saturday from the NGO. These three rescues successively saved 59 people and then 65 people aboard two wooden boats, three hours apart. Then 29 people in distress from a fiberglass boat were rescued.
At sea for five days, including two days without water or food, these survivors were exhausted and largely dehydrated, according to SOS Méditerranée. With the 15 refugees rescued on Thursday, it is therefore with a total of 168 survivors, including seven women, four children and around twenty unaccompanied minors, that “Ocean Viking” is now heading towards Civitavecchia, the safe port which was designated by the Italian authorities, 942 km away, or three days of navigation.
The most dangerous migration route in the world
These search and rescue operations, triggered after an alert via Alarm Phone, a telephone line for people in distress at sea managed by an NGO, were “closely coordinated by the Italian maritime authorities”, welcomed the association. humanitarian organization based in Marseille, recalling that “SOS Méditerranée has been calling for such vital coordination efforts for years”.
Even though many rescues take place in the Maltese search area, the Maltese authorities never respond to requests for assistance from humanitarian NGOs helping migrants, and in particular SOS Méditerranée, and it is ultimately the Italian authorities who usually point them to a safe harbor. But Italy’s practice of assigning very distant ports to sea rescue NGOs was denounced at the beginning of January by several international NGOs, which considered that it was in fact “to hinder assistance to people in distress” by causing them to waste a lot of time and therefore de facto reducing their ability to help.
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 in 2022, 1,417 refugees disappeared there. This figure is already 824 since the beginning of 2023.