The complaint from Sea Watch activists who were rescuing three boats off the coast of Libya
A rescue operation at sea put at risk by the Libyan Coast Guard. This is what activists from the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch say who, to document the action, released a film taken from their Seabird plane.
«Our Seabird aircraft spotted three boats in distress with approximately 90 people on board. On the scene, the NGO ship Humanity 1, busy rescuing them. A Libyan patrol boat, which shortly before we had documented intercepting a dinghy with around 50 people, arrived on the scene and carried out dangerous maneuvers which caused chaos and several people fell into the water. The patrol boat also fired some shots into the water. SOS Humanity teams rescued 77 people but according to survivors at least one person drowned.” In the video shot by the Seabird, only two of the three boats full of migrants can be seen. We are about 70 kilometers from the Libyan coast, last Saturday. The three fiberglass boats (they are the white ones) each have about thirty migrants on board. A Libyan patrol boat is seen approaching two of them at full speed (from the right of the shot). The video moves to boats full of people. Everyone is agitated and everyone has life jackets because a rescue operation was underway, in fact, and the floating jackets had already been distributed to the migrants. They were helped by activists who relied on Humanity1, the largest ship seen on the right in the video, from a distance. Two lifeboats had been put into the water by Humanity1 and everything was underway when the Libyan Coast Guard appeared. Both their patrol boat and one of its dinghys approached the boats and with the resulting chaos, many ended up in the sea. It was the Humanity1 inflatable boats that saved them, while “shots were fired into the water from the patrol boat”, swear the Sea-Whatc activists, who speak of “criminal actions” and “violent manoeuvres”.
March 4, 2024
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