Among the evacuees are “9 women and around 40 unaccompanied minors”, said SOS Méditerranée. Saturday afternoon, the ambulance ship ocean vikingchartered by this humanitarian NGO located in Marseille, rescued 92 migrants in distress aboard an “overloaded and deflated” pneumatic boat off the coast of Libya.
The survivors, mostly “exhausted, some suffering from petrol burns and injuries”, were cared for by SOS Méditerranée and a Red Cross team. Some, too weak, had to be transported on a stretcher and warmed by blankets.
Port of landing assigned to 830 km
The NGO indicated in the evening that the Italian authorities assigned it the port of Salerno (West, in Campania) “as a safe place for disembarkation”. This is located 450 nautical miles (approximately 833 kilometers) away from the current location of theocean viking. “As the weather forecast is deteriorating, we fear that the prolonged navigation will affect the fragile condition of the survivors,” the NGO said in a statement.
In early January, several international NGOs involved in rescue operations for migrants in the Mediterranean denounced the desire of the far-right Italian government “to hinder assistance to people in distress”. They pointed to the cross-effects of a decree obliging ships to go “without delay” to an Italian port after each rescue and the now usual assignment of very distant ports, reducing the capacity for assistance.