Off the coast of Libya once again the stories of those who made it and those who lost their lives cross paths. Today the Ocean Viking, the ship of the NGO Sos Mediterraneee, rescued 106 people from West Africa, in addition to the 10 recovered two days ago. In the meantime, however, Alarm Phone, the “migrant switchboard”, provided a reconstruction of the shipwreck that took place last Thursday, which greatly aggravates the initial toll of about thirty deaths: they would be at least 60, according to the 45 survivors, rescued on Thursday night by the crews of some Libyan fishing boats who saw their boat on fire after an explosion on board. Only 6 corpses recovered, of which we have news.
According to the Alarm Phone, “the authorities alerted at 3 am did not intervene. The boat was on fire but the people were abandoned in the sea ». The NGO that receives the calls for help from migrants also denounced that, once they were brought back to Libya, “the survivors were arrested” and that “the Libyan authorities declared 5 dead: another lie to cover up their crimes and hide the approximately 60 deaths “. On the episode, Alarm Phone says it is conducting a more detailed investigation after which it will provide a report. The accident occurred off Zuwara, not far from the coast.
Ocean Viking, one of the two humanitarian ships currently in the central Mediterranean (the other is Open Arms) in the morning reached an inflatable boat overloaded with migrants, precisely on the Alarm Phone report but also from the Seabird reconnaissance plane of the NGO Sea Watch, 34 miles off the coast of Sabratha. On board, 106 people; among them, 67 minors, of which 51 unaccompanied, 8 women and 31 men. All of them, Sos Mediterranee said, come from West African countries.
The day before yesterday the Ocean Viking had recovered ten people, among them a newborn, 3 children and two women, who were on board a small fiberglass boat that was taking on water; an intervention carried out 36 miles off the coast of Mellitah and unusually requested by a Libyan patrol boat, belonging to the GACS (the so-called Libyan Coastal Security managed by the Ministry of the Interior of Tripoli) which was near the boat, with the epilogue of an unpublished episode : an eleventh person who was on board the boat asked not to get on the Ocean Viking but to be allowed to return to Libya. For this, the operators of Sos Mediterranee gave him a life jacket and the man boarded the Libyan patrol boat which also towed the boat. The most probable hypothesis is that it was a smuggler and that, with the complicity of some Libyan militia, he thus “saved” the boat and returned to Libya to organize a new trip for desperate people.