There has been a new shipwreck off the coast of Libya. According to International Migration Organization spokesperson Safa Msehli, the bodies of 11 migrants were washed ashore in Libya today after a boat capsized off the coast of Zawya. Twelve survivors were found and reported by the coast guard. But other victims are risked after those at the end of April: Alarm Phone announced this morning that he has lost contact with a barge, with 95 people on board, which is in international waters with the engine failing. “Our last contact with the boat was at 10.12 – wrote on Twitter Alarm Phone – They said they had no battery left and that a plane was watching them from above. Their phone is no longer reachable. The Coast Guard has said to call the Libyans but today no one speaks English. Help now! “.
After the desperate appeal of the NGO, sources of the Coast Guard reported that the boat was spotted by an aircraft Frontex, is adrift and is in the area of responsibility Libyan SAR. The Libyan Coast Guard, which took over the coordination of the SAR event, sent its own patrol boat which was unable to reach the spot due to poor weather conditions. The Libyan Coast Guard itself subsequently requested the collaboration of the Italian Coast Guard to hijack the nearest merchant ships, in accordance with the provisions of international conventions on search and rescue at sea. The Operations Center of the Italian Coast Guard thus identified, thanks to the monitoring systems, the two units closest to the sighting point of the Frontex aircraft. The units, a supply vessel and an oil tanker, coordinated by the Libyan authorities, will arrive in the next few hours on the last known position of the vessel reported by the Frontex aircraft.
Sea Watch 4 calls for a safe harbor
In the morning, the Sea Watch 4 ship had meanwhile intervened to recover 51 people on a double-decker wooden boat. The boat of the German NGO is now 46 nautical miles south-west of Lampedusa and currently, after the other 5 interventions carried out in the past few hours, 455 people have been rescued on board. Given the difficult situation, Sea Watch asks that it be “immediately assigned a safe harbor!”.
In Lampedusa hotspot in trouble
The hotspot of Lampedusa, however, is in difficulty: this morning 190 migrants were boarded on the ferry and transferred to Porto Empedocle and at the moment 270 people remain on the island. Another 274 migrants yesterday were taken to the Allegra quarantine ship, in the harbor on the island. Due to the strong wind and the bad weather conditions, migrants aboard four boats intercepted off the coast of Lampedusa were rescued by NGO ships. Since last Friday, there have been six landings in Lampedusa, 723 people rescued. The last two boats were blocked 12 miles from the coast by Coast Guard patrol boats. The first boat, carrying 100 people, including 5 women, was left adrift. Same fate for the 8-meter “cart”, with 51 men on board.
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Libyan authorities: “600 people rescued”
For their part, the Libyan authorities have announced that they have rescued more than 600 migrants at sea in the last two days. The spokesman for the chief of staff of the Libyan naval forces, Brigadier General Baha Masoud Abdel Samad, announced the rescue of 172 immigrants of African nationality traveling to Europe on a rubber dinghy north of the city of Zawiya. On Friday 30 April, 334 migrants of different African nationalities were rescued, who were traveling to the coasts of Europe aboard 4 rubber boats north of the capital, Tripoli. On the same day, the Libyan Coast Guard rescued 132 African migrants north of the city of Khums, after receiving a distress call, bringing the number of migrants rescued in the past two days to over 600.
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Some landings have also affected the Salento coast: in fact, we are heading towards the fourth arrival in less than a week on the southern coast of Salento. The Guardia di Finanza has in fact spotted a boat 700 miles from Leuca (Lecce) carrying 56 migrants, 4 of which are minors. The yellow flames are escorting the boat towards the coast, where the police staff are waiting for them, who will welcome them, check their state of health together with the Red Cross, and then the tampons and then organize the accompaniment to the center. masseria Ghermi for mandatory quarantine. With this landing we are 182 arrivals in a week.
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