Guardian Angel ocean vikingthe ambulance ship chartered by the NGO SOS Méditerranée, has just rescued 438 migrants in distress off the Libyan and Tunisian coasts in just 48 hours.
The Marseille-based NGO had first announced Thursday morning that it had come to the assistance of “272 people”, who were on three boats, including “32 unaccompanied minors, nine babies and five people with disabilities”, with ” 23 nationalities represented”. It was only later that the NGO announced that it had recovered 166 additional people after having “assisted multiple boats in distress and evacuated survivors in coordination with the Italian coast guard in the search and rescue area between Tunisia and Lampedusa”.
Direction Italy
In total, “438 survivors are currently on board,” the NGO said, adding that its ship “is now on its way to Genoa (northern Italy), the remote safe port that has been assigned by the Italian authorities for disembark the survivors”.
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, 2,013 migrants have disappeared there, compared to 1,417 over 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. L’ocean viking had been detained for ten days in July by the Italian authorities who blamed him for security failures, but he had been authorized to return to sea on July 21.