(Marseilles) Theocean vikingan ambulance ship chartered by SOS Méditerranée, rescued 68 migrants in distress in international waters off Libya on Sunday morning, announced the France-based humanitarian NGO.
” L’ocean viking rescued 68 people shipwrecked from a double-deck wooden boat which had left Zouara in Libya last night,” the NGO said in a press release.
“Several of them are suffering from seasickness and are currently being treated by the medical team of SOS Méditerranée and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on board theocean viking “, she added.
In photos published by the NGO on X (formerly Twitter), we see several dozen migrants crammed into a makeshift boat wearing orange life jackets.
The Italian authorities assigned the NGO the port of Ancona to disembark the survivors, a distant port which does not satisfy the NGO.
“The port is 1560 km (or 4 days of navigation) from the area of operation, while there are crucial needs for search and rescue capabilities in the Mediterranean. There are many departures and the risk of loss of life is high,” she regretted.
Since coming to power in 2022, the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, which includes the head of the Anti-Migrant League Matteo Salvini as deputy prime minister, has stepped up measures to hinder the activities of NGOs aid to migrants.
At the end of August, theocean viking had already rescued 440 migrants in distress at sea in international waters off Libya and Tunisia before heading to Genoa (northern Italy), the remote safe port assigned to it 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 start of 2023, 2,066 migrants have disappeared there compared to 1,417 for 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, but in the eastern Mediterranean.
L’ocean viking was detained for 10 days in July by the Italian authorities who accused him of security failures, but he was authorized to return to sea on July 21.