The Ocean Viking, an SOS Méditerranée humanitarian ship, has rescued 268 people since Thursday during five rescues of migrants who are mostly in overcrowded wooden boats between Libya and Malta, the NGO announced on Friday.
“Many have high levels of exhaustion and dehydration” and “severe sunburns,” said the Marseille-based NGO.
SOS Méditerranée and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in the Viking Ocean are now caring for a number of minors, including unaccompanied minors, pregnant women and even a three-week-old baby.
2048 dead and missing in 2021
On Tuesday, the ambulance boat explained that it had seen four empty boats in this area, including one without an engine. But “without communication from the maritime authorities, the fate of the people on board is unknown,” she said. Since the beginning of the year, 1,161 migrants have disappeared in the Mediterranean, including 918 in the central Mediterranean, the world’s most dangerous migration route, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The UN agency estimated the number of dead and missing in 2021 at 2,048 in the Mediterranean, including 1,553 in the central Mediterranean alone. Every year, thousands of people fleeing conflict or poverty try to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, whose shores are some 300 kilometers from Italy.
Source: BFM TV
