MSF says Libyan boat ‘endangered’ rescue of 87 migrants in Mediterranean

11 Jul. () –

The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has denounced this Wednesday that the armed militia Stability Support Apparatus (SSA) of Libya has “endangered” the rescue of 87 migrants in an operation carried out by members of the organization who were on board the ship ‘Geo Barents’ in the central Mediterranean.

“This morning, while MSF teams were rescuing an unseaworthy inflatable raft in international waters, a Libyan Stability Support Facility vessel came very close, endangering everyone’s safety,” the statement said.

MSF said that when the Libyan boat arrived, most of the survivors on board jumped into the water and later told emergency teams that they “preferred to die at sea rather than be dragged back to the place they were fleeing from.”

The NGO, which said it managed to rescue them with air support from ‘Sea Watch’, said that among the survivors there are children and babies and strongly condemned “these reckless manoeuvres that have put the lives of the rescued people at risk.”

The NGO SOS Méditerranée subsequently reported that 261 people had been rescued, including thirteen women, eleven children and 41 unaccompanied minors, in several boats located at sea and which were packed with people, although one of them was “on the verge of capsizing” because water was taking on.

Workers found dozens of these people “weak and dehydrated after spending three days at sea” and many of them had fuel burns,” the NGO said on its profile on social network X.