Three NGOs stated on Sunday (August 1st) that they rescued more than 400 people who tried to cross the Mediterranean overnight after their ship encountered trouble.
The NGOs SOS Mediterranée, Sea-Watch and ResQship stated that their rescue ships Ocean Viking, Sea-Watch 3 and Nadir picked up the migrants after their “big wooden boats” began to enter the water.
“All night until early morning, we participated in the emergency rescue of about 400 people with @seawatch_intl and @resqship_int,” SOS Mediterranée tweeted.
“The survivors are now being treated on #OceanViking and #SeaWatch3.”
The SAR team is in #OceanViking 106 people have just been rescued from an overcrowded wooden boat in distress in the Maltese SRR.
The distress case was discovered first #SeaWatch3.
The youngest survivor rescued in this operation was only 3 months old. We now have 555 survivors. pic.twitter.com/AzPH8n9CTN
-SOS MEDITERRANEE (@SOSMedIntl) August 1, 2021
The NGO stated that this is Ocean Viking’s fifth rescue operation since Saturday, and the ship now has “a total of 449 survivors.”
According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, at least 1,146 people died while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the first six months of this year.
SOS Mediterranée stated that it has rescued more than 30,000 people since February 2016. The NGO accused EU governments of neglecting to coordinate search and rescue operations to prevent immigrants from trying to cross the war-torn Libya, often victims of organized crime and militia violence.
The Libyan authorities are also accused of forcibly returning the intercepted ships to Libya, even if they are in European waters.
A report by the United Nations Human Rights Office in late May urged Libya and the European Union to overhaul their rescue operations, saying that existing policies “failed to prioritize the lives, safety and human rights of people trying to cross Africa”.
