The ship of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the Geo Barents, rescued some 300 people from a boat in distress on Tuesday, a few hours after starting a new mission in the central Mediterranean.
The rescue operation lasted more than four hours. “Our team is relentless: just after completing training and entering the search and rescue region of Malta, the Geo Barents today rescued some 300 people, including many women and children, from an overcrowded and distressed vessel,” wrote the NGO on social networks. .
The MSF boat, which had disembarked 75 rescued migrants a few hours earlier in Naples (southern Italy), located the Alarm Phone boat, an organization that receives calls from migrants in distress at sea.
“Following the alert received from the Alarm Phone, it took us about four hours to complete this rescue operation. Now they are all safe on board the ship and our team is taking care of them,” added MSF.
Last week there was a new wave of landings off the Italian coast, with the arrival of almost 3,000 people in 48 hours in Lampedusa alone, which slowed down in recent hours due to worsening weather conditions.
In the first four months of 2023, four times more people arrived in Italy than in the previous year: 40,856 people compared to 10,188 in 2022, according to the latest official data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior.
Source: TSF
