Rescue ships picked up more than 700 people trying to cross the Mediterranean in makeshift vessels this weekend, mainly off the coasts of Libya and Malta, a migrant aid group said Sunday.
The latest figures came as UN migration officials repeated their calls for a fairer mechanism to share out the responsibility of caring for them, rather than leaving it to the Mediterranean countries.
SOS Mediterranee said that its vessel, the Ocean Viking, had carried out six separate operations in international waters since Saturday.
In the last such intervention, it rescued 106 people off the Maltese coastline after being alerted by German aid group Sea-Watch, said the Marseille-based organization.
“The youngest survivor rescued in this operation is just 3 months old,” SOS Mediterranee tweeted.
Overnight Saturday to Sunday, the Ocean Viking joined vessels from Sea Watch and ResQship, another German group, to help 400 people in difficulty in the central Mediterranean, said the group. They were rescued from a vessel that was taking in water, in what a spokesman for the organization told AFP was a particularly perilous operation.
Those who were rescued were shared out between the Ocean Viking and Sea-Watch3.
Ocean Viking alone has 555 passengers on board from this weekend’s operations, including at least 28 women, two of whom are pregnant. The organization has yet to determine at which safe port they will be able to leave them.
Libya remains one of the main departure points for tens of thousands of migrants hoping to attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing, despite the continuing insecurity in the country. Most of them try to reach the Italian coast, some 300 kilometers away.
A view of one of two areas now being used at a warehouse facility in Dover, Kent, on Tuesday for boats used by people thought to be migrants attempting to get to the UK. The boats are stored after being intercepted in the English Channel by the UK Border Force as attempts to make the crossing continue. Photo: VCG
