2023-08-12 10:42:02
The Ocean Viking, an ambulance ship chartered by SOS Méditerranée, has rescued 623 people in distress during 15 rescues in the past 36 hours south-west of the Italian island of Lampedusa, the humanitarian NGO based in in Marseille.
Among these migrants, the NGO has identified 146 unaccompanied minors and 15 accompanied minors as well as two pregnant women, she told AFP.
From Sudan, Guinea, Ivory Coast…
Not having the capacity to transport all the survivors over a long distance, part of them will be disembarked in the evening towards Lampedusa and the other in Civitavecchia, a port located northwest of Rome, which the ship should “achieve by August 14 or 15,” said deputy director of operations Carla Melki.
Many of the survivors are from Sudan, a country at war for almost four months, but also from Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin and Bangladesh.
Already 1,848 migrants missing in 2023
The Ocean Viking had received Thursday “the instruction from the Italian rescue coordination center to assist in cases of distress southwest of Lampedusa”, explained in the SOS Méditerranée day in a press release.
The central Mediterranean is the most dangerous migration route in the world, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The UN agency estimates that since the beginning of 2023, 1,848 migrants have disappeared there, compared to 1,417 throughout 2022.
The Ocean Viking had been held for ten days in July by the Italian authorities who blamed it for security failures, but it had been authorized to return to sea on July 21.
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