MARSEILLE: The French charity SOS Mediterranee, operating the migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking, on Saturday announced that it had saved 153 people in distress off the coast of Malta. On Friday, the rescue operations in the central Mediterranean were coordinated by Italian maritime authorities, it said.
According to the charity, the rescues took place in quick succession and involved 59 and 65 people traveling on two wooden boats, followed by the rescue of 29 people from a fiberglass vessel after another distress signal. The migrants had been at sea for five days and had gone without food and water for two days, it added, saying they were severely dehydrated.
This comes after another 15 migrants were rescued in the same area on Thursday. However, Maltese authorities have largely ignored calls for help from migrant rescue vessels, and the migrants were instead being transported to the Italian port of Civitavecchia, nearly 1,000 kilometers away, according to SOS Mediterranee.
Ratio of rescued and arrived migrants
The new Italian government, which campaigned on a promise to “stop arrivals,” says charity vessels in the area sail under the flags of specific countries, namely France and Germany, which consequently have a duty to take in some of those rescued. However, according to the Italian interior ministry, France and Germany have taken in only a fraction of the nearly 90,000 people who have arrived by sea so far this year.
According to Matteo Villa from the Institute for International Political Studies, the migrants rescued by charity vessels make up just 14 percent of arrivals over the past 12 months.
The situation in the Mediterranean has long been a point of contention between European Union member states, with some advocating for increased support for rescue missions and others calling for tighter border controls. The latest incident highlights the ongoing crisis and the need for coordinated efforts to address the issue.
