The Italian Coast Guard is undertaking the rescue of a distressed migrant boat carrying 400 people near Malta, the NGO Sea Watch International tweeted on Monday morning, April 10th.
This follows three other rescues over the Easter weekend, the deaths of at least 50 migrants, and the arrival on the Italian island of Lampedusa of 26 boats carrying 974 migrants on Easter Sunday.
The Malta Independent reports that Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Sfax, told reporters the Tunisian Coast Guard rescued two boatloads of migrant boats off the city’s coast of Sfax over the weekend, one on Friday and one on Saturday.
On Friday, 20 sub-Saharans drowned, and seventeen others, including three children, were saved after their boat had sunk about 35 miles (about 56 kilometres) from Sfax. Masmoudi added that two of the survivors pulled from the water were in critical condition. He said that on Saturday, 36 migrants were saved, but four died and three were still missing.
On Sunday, the NGO ResQship announced on Twitter that it assisted a ship near Malta on Sunday, April 9th, rescuing 22 survivors and lifting two dead bodies from the water with its ship the Nadir, though 23 people reportedly drowned before the Nadir reached them. The NGO tweeted,
Speechless and devastated. After hours of non-stop distress cases, our crew was alerted to another DC. When they arrived they found about 25 people in the water – they had been in there for about 2 hours already. Our crew was able to recover 22 survivors and 2 deceased.
This was just one of many migrant boats in the Mediterranean likely in distress. Sea-Watch International tweeted Sunday afternoon:
One boat it found was adrift between Greece and Malta carrying 400 people. Two merchant ships were the first to respond to the boat’s distress calls on Easter Sunday, according to Sea Watch, but Maltese authorities ordered the civil boats to provide only fuel to the vessel that had left from Libya.
Sea-Watch tweeted on Sunday:
The organisation updated the tweet on Monday morning stating that the merchant ships had supplied food and water to the distressed boat also being tossed by 1.5 metre-high waves and added:
The [Italian] Coast Guard set out to rescue the 400 people from the life-threatening situation. Malta must be held accountable for the ruthless ignorance.
Sea-Watch accused Malta of intentionally not rescuing the boat so that Italian authorities would have to step in, endangering the lives of the passengers.
Reuters reported that it reached out to Maltese authorities but had not received a response.
“Preventing the rescue of people for political calculation must be punished!” Sea Watch International tweeted.
The 974 migrants who landed in Lampedusa on Easter Sunday had, according to Italian authorities, left from Zarzis, Chebba, Jebiniana, and Kerkennah in Tunisia, after paying $4,000 each for their place in the boat.
With the number of migrants setting out for and reaching Italy up four-fold compared to a year ago, according to figures from both the Tunisian and Italian governments, the Tunisian Coast Guard also said that it has prevented thousands of migrant crossings.
“Coast guard patrols prevented 501 clandestine attempts to cross the maritime border and rescued 14,406 (migrants) including 13,138 from sub-Saharan African countries” between January 1st and March 31st, the Tunisian Coast Guard said in a statement.
Tunisian National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli told AFP that is up from 2,532 intercepted in the same months last year, including 1,657 from sub-Saharan Africa.
If Sea Watch is right, there are more migrants on their way but not all will make it safely to shore.
