Ambulance ship “Ocean Viking” saves 153 migrants in the Mediterranean

Three rescues in just seven hours. ocean viking, the ambulance ship of SOS Méditerranée, rescued 153 migrants on Friday in the Mediterranean, in the Maltese search area, AFP learned on Saturday April 29 from the NGO. In detail, these three rescues successively saved 59 people, then 65 people on board two wooden boats, three hours apart. Then 29 people in distress from a fiberglass boat were rescued.

These search and rescue operations were triggered after an alert on the Alarm Phone telephone line, managed by a collective for people in distress at sea. They were “closely coordinated by the Italian maritime authorities”welcomed the humanitarian association SOS Méditerranée based in Marseille, recalling that “SOS Méditerranée has been calling for such vital coordination efforts for years”.

At sea for five days, including two days without water or food, these survivors were exhausted and largely dehydrated, according to the NGO. With the 15 migrants rescued on Thursday, it is therefore with 168 survivors in total, including seven women, four children and around twenty unaccompanied minors, that theocean viking is now heading for Civitavecchia, the safe port designated for her by the Italian authorities, 942 km away, or three days of navigation. In France, at the end of March, a parliamentary mission pointed “several malfunctions” when welcoming the ship ocean vikingwhich took place in November 2022.