Italian and Maltese rescuers, as well as merchant vessels passing through the Sicily strait were overwhelmed yesterday with 26 SOS calls made from migrants attempting to cross to Europe from Libya aboard unseaworthy dinghies and wooden boats.
The Maydays started just before 8am and continued relentlessly until the evening.
At the time of writing last night, 2,000 people, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, had been rescued from 10 dinghies but there were still 16 other vessels in distress.
Rescuers were unable to say how many migrants were on board the remaining boats, but they expect to save another 1500 to 2500 people. The migrants rescued were taken to Sicily and Lampedusa.
None of the ones who were still to be picked up are likely to be brought to Malta because of the location in which they were rescued, about 30 miles off the Libyan coast, below the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The dinghies the smugglers are using are absolutely worthless
Five boats were being approached at the time of writing, while military and commercial vessels in the area were diverted to the remaining 11. The Rome rescue centre, which is coordinating the ongoing Frontex border patrol mission, scrambled five Italian military and coastguard vessels and an Armed Forces patrol boat along with several merchant ships sailing through the area.
“It’s an absolute crisis,” a military source told Times of Malta, pointing out that the number of rescues was unprecedented for this year. There had been similar incidents last year but this year “We’ve seen nothing like this and I don’t think we’ve ever had a day like today at this time of year,” the source said.
Smugglers operating from a zone west of Tripoli have exploited a window of very good weather in the past couple of days, sending dozens of boats, mostly from the coastal towns of Sabratha, Zawiya and Zuwara.
Sources in Libya said the smugglers were likely towing empty dinghies to sea and then transferring the migrants to them from larger vessels. “The dinghies they are using are absolutely worthless, they’re unable to keep afloat even after a few dozen miles, which means that if they had to start the journey from the Libyan coast, they would sink within the country’s territorial waters.
“So they are probably using this system to make sure they cross the sea border,” the source said.
Yesterday’s wave comes only a day after Italy rescued nearly 700 people aboard some seven boats from the same zone. On Friday, another 978 people were rescued from three boats.
Times of Malta managed to make contact with a boat carrying 522 migrants from this group on Friday. An Eritrean man who answered the call on a satellite phone on board said the situation on the dinghy was dire and pointed out that there were many women, one of them pregnant, and at least two children on board.