A group of almost 1,000 migrants who were in distress on Friday off the coast of Libya are safe in Lampedusa following a series of overnight rescues.
The migrants were picked up by three merchant vessels and an Italian navy ship between Friday and yesterday. In all 978 people were rescued, though one person died before help arrived.
But while this group of asylum seekers was being taken to Lampedusa, more SOS calls were being launched from vessels in distress just off Libya.
Sources in Libya said smugglers are taking advantage of good weather. There are thousands of migrants ready to make the crossing at the first available opportunity and the smugglers have almost complete control over hot spots like Zuwara, west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
“Not only do they control important coastal locations now but they have better control over the whole process including detention centres,” a source told The Sunday of Times of Malta. On Friday, the search and rescue centre in Rome, which is currently the hub of the Frontex border patrol operation Triton, coordinated the rescue of three vessels.
Smugglers have better control over the whole process, including detention centres
A group of 235 migrants were rescued on Friday afternoon by a merchant vessel that was directed to the asylum seekers’ vessel.
An Italian navy vessel, the Orione, rescued another group of 221 while two merchant ships picked up a group of some 522 migrants from Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia overnight.
Times of Malta had managed to make contact with this group on a satellite phone number supplied by a source. An Eritrean man on the other end of the line said there were some 620 people on board.
“Many people are vomiting, we have no water, we have no food… and the engine, sometimes it is stopping,” one migrant said.
In fact, there were about 100 fewer migrants, but rescuers said it is normal for the people on board not to be able to provide accurate figures regarding the number of people on the vessel.
“They would be crammed on a boat, often unable to move, it’s very hard to have a head count and very often smugglers would tell them that a certain number of people will board the vessel and then they end up cramming many more, so the numbers are almost always an approximation,” an experienced Italian rescuer told The Sunday Times of Malta.
At first, Italian authorities thought they were dealing with as many as 1,500 migrants. Meanwhile, Rome was coordinating another group of rescues following several SOS messages launched early on Saturday.