Lots of women and minors
Médecins Sans Frontières rescues over 70 boat migrants in the Mediterranean
Médecins Sans Frontières civilian sea rescuers have boarded more than 70 migrant boats in the central Mediterranean. Among them were many women and minors, the private aid organization tweeted late Sunday evening.
ARCHIVE – Migrants sit in a wooden boat south of the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Francisco Seco/AP/dpa
A day earlier, people had left the coast of the North African civil war country Libya with their overcrowded rubber dinghy. At the end of last week, the Médecins Sans Frontières crew reached their operational area in the Mediterranean with the “Geo Barents”.
Again and again, the volunteers there rescue migrants who get into distress at sea on the crossing to the EU. The German ships “Humanity 1” and “Louise Michel” are currently on a sea rescue mission in the area off the coasts of Libya and Tunisia. Usually they bring the rescued to Italy. However, the right-wing government in Rome wants to prevent this. A few weeks ago, this led to a diplomatic dispute with Germany and France, when several sea rescue ships were waiting off the coast of Sicily, waiting for the Italian authorities to allocate a port.
(SDA)