Rescue group says it found a woman and child dead and a woman alive in Mediterranean

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An aid group has accused Libya’s coastguard of abandoning three people in the Mediterranean, including a woman and a toddler who died, after the coastguard intercepted a boat carrying 160 people heading for Europe.



Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish rescue group, said it found one woman alive on Tuesday and another dead, along with the toddler, amid the drifting wreckage of a boat about 90 miles from the Libyan coast.

It posted images and videos of the wreckage and the dead bodies on social media, and accused both a merchant ship sailing in international waters and the Libyan coastguard of failing to help the three people.

The coastguard said it carried out rescues of Europe-bound refugees and migrants “in accordance with international standards in saving lives at sea”.

A spokesman said: “All disasters happening in the sea are caused by human traffickers who are only interested in profit and the presence of such irresponsible non-governmental groups in the region.”

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The head of Proactiva Open Arms, Òscar Camps, blamed the Italian government’s cooperation with Libyan authorities for the deaths. “This is the direct consequence of contracting armed militias to make the rest of Europe believe that Libya is a state, a government and a safe country,” he said in a video posted on Twitter.

Camps said the two women and the toddler had refused to board the Libyan vessels with the rest of the intercepted group and were abandoned in the sea after the coastguard destroyed their boat.

He said: “The blame for this crime falls on Matteo Salvini’s policies” – a reference to Italy’s hard-line interior minister.

Proactiva Open Arms said on Wednesday it was taking the survivor to Spain for her safety.

In a statement explaining why it had decided to go back to Spain, the NGO said authorities in Italy had offered to take in the woman but not the two bodies.

It added it feared “for the protection of the surviving woman and her complete freedom to testify” on what had happened at sea if they left her in Italy, which has taken a hardline stance towards migrant arrivals.

According to the UN migration agency, 1,443 people have died or gone missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year, up to 15 July. Libya has emerged as a key transit point as traffickers exploit the lawlessness and chaos that has engulfed the country since an uprising in 2011.

Italy’s new populist government has vowed to halt the influx of refugees and migrants across the Mediterranean and has given aid to Libyan authorities to do that. Human rights activists say people being returned to Libya are at risk of beatings, abuse, rape and slavery.

The coastguard said earlier on Tuesday that a boat carrying 158 passengers had been stopped on Monday off the coast of the western town of Khoms. It said the passengers were given humanitarian and medical aid and were taken to a refugee camp in Khoms.

The coastguard said it had rescued more than 80,000 people who had departed Libya for Europe in recent years.

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Both Italy and Malta have blocked aid groups from operating rescue boats in the Mediterranean, either by refusing them entry to their ports or by impounding their vessels and putting their crews under investigation.

Salvini rejected any criticism of his country’s stance on migration. “Lies and insults from some foreign NGO confirm that we are right: reducing the departures and disembarkations means reducing deaths and reducing the earnings of those who speculate on clandestine migration,” Salvini said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

At the opening of a police station in Fermo, central Italy, Salvini said, “I challenge anyone to find a tweet where I ask for a human being to be left to drown at sea. My objective is to save everyone. To aid everyone. To heal everyone. To feed everyone. But to avoid everyone coming to Italy.”

The International Organization for Migration reported on Tuesday that the number of migrants and refugees reaching Spain by sea this year (18,016) had overtaken the number arriving in Italy (17,827).

Aid groups have reported a rise in the number of sea crossings to Spain and Greece compared to the previous year, and migrant arrivals in Italy are down almost 80% from 2017.

The overall number of refugees and migrants entering Europe by sea this year totals 50,872, less than half the 109,746 who had arrived by mid-July last year, the agency said. In the same period in 2016, 241,859 refugees and migrants came to Europe.