First Published Aug 3, 2021, 4:16 PM IST
ATheir hopes were dashed, and they were all thinking about drowning in the middle of the sea that night. Until the discovery of the rescue ship Sea Watch 3, life was just a vast sea in front of those refugees. As the weather improved, hundreds of boats from the African mainland advanced to Europe, carrying refugees. But many were wooden and old boats. Each boat had two to three times as many refugees as it could hold. The boat, Sea Watch, an NGO working to rescue refugees 68 kilometers (42 miles) off the coast of North Africa, lost control of their boat and was reported to be floating in the sea.
More than 400 illegal immigrants from Tunisia were rescued last week alone. They were rescued while trying to immigrate to Europe illegally in a wooden boat.
They were traveling when the engine of the boat came to a standstill due to mechanical problems. The Sea Watch 3 found and rescued so many refugees as the boat ran aground in the middle of the sea.
The commander of the Sea-Watch 3 ship said there were 394 people on board, Reuters reported.
The refugees were first found by Sea Watch 3, a German volunteer organization that led the rescue effort. Subsequent inspections revealed that the boat was carrying so many refugees.
141 people were taken to Sea-Watch 3 while the rest were transferred to Ocean Viking. Both ships rescued 394 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea, Reuters news agency reported.
Sea Watch, a German NGO, is a voluntary organization that monitors refugees and protects stranded refugee boats at sea.
Ocean Viking was a cargo ship launched in 1986 to assist oil ships in the Mediterranean Sea. But with the Norwegian support, the cargo ship was later converted into a refugee rescue ship.
Ocean Viking has been working to rescue stranded refugees in the Mediterranean since 2019.
The ship can carry up to 30 people (nine crew members, a search and rescue team and medical personnel) and can carry up to 200 people at a time.
As of last Sunday evening, the Ocean Viking alone had rescued 555 people. It is reported that they are now looking for a port to land them safely.
It is not clear how many people were on board the rescued refugee boat or how many died on board. The survivors reportedly included a three-month-old baby.
The Berlin-based Sea-Watch organization described the current situation in the Mediterranean as “extremely critical”. The Italian Coast Guard brought six people ashore due to ill health in the rescue.
On Sunday, the ship reportedly rescued 26 more people from the sea. This brings the total number of people on board to 250.
Survivors say more migrant boats have left Libya, Tunisia, Italy and other parts of Europe in recent months as the weather has improved.
According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, more than 1,100 people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East have died at sea in the Mediterranean this year.
Attempts by refugees to reach EU countries via the Central Mediterranean are said to be highly dangerous.
Traveling in unsafe boats on a busy shipping lane can be extremely dangerous. NGOs in the area say the boat’s engine, which was the last refugee to be rescued, was at a standstill, inviting danger. Immigrants are mainly from Morocco, Bangladesh, Egypt and Syria.
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