Emma Wallis
Thursday June 16, 2022
The crew of Sea-Eye 4 help migrants on to their boat in June, 2022 | Photo: Maria Maida 7 from Twitter feed: @seaeyeorg
Two private rescue ships, the Sea-Eye 4 and the Aita Mari,
have carried out rescues relatively close to each other not too far off the
Libyan and Tunisian coasts. Sea-Eye 4 rescued 63 migrants on Tuesday and Aita
Mari carried out a rescue on Wednesday of 17.
On Wednesday morning (June 15), the Spanish humanitarian
rescue organization Maydayterraneo tweeted that they had rescued 17 people from
a small boat in the Mediterranean. In fact, they tweeted that it had been a
"complicated rescue" because the boat the 17 had been traveling on
had at least 103 on board, and they were in the process of being returned to
Libya by the Libyan coast guard when the Aita Mari came near them.
In the video posted to Twitter, you hear the crew telling
them to wait, while throwing life jackets to those already in the water.
According to the Aita Mari crew, and videos they posted on
twitter. Some of those on board threw themselves into the sea in order to avoid
the Libyan coast guard patrol. "Two of them had to be monitored in the on
board hospital, but their lives are not in danger," concluded the tweet.
A video shows at least one of those people regurgitating sea
water after swimming in the sea, their hands hanging limply off the narrow
hospital stretcher on board the Aita Mari, being attended by several crew
members.
On June 14, the Aita Mari crew tweeted about another rescue
of 11 people. The majority of them were from Morocco and Bangladesh, as well as
an unaccompanied minor from Somalia, said the Maydayterraneo crew.
The Aita Mari crew also posted pictures of those on board,
huddling under blankets or undergoing COVID-19 tests. "Everyone is
negative!" declared the crew happily. The ship, which sailed from Spain
near the beginning of June has been off the coast of Tunisia and Libya for the
last few days.
63 rescued by Sea-Eye
4
Not too far away from the Aita Mari, according to the
current position on the website Marine Traffic Locator, is another humanitarian
rescue ship, Sea-Eye 4, run by the German organization Sea-Eye. On Tuesday, the
crew of Sea-Eye 4 rescued 63 people, after being alerted to their plight by the
Mediterranean monitoring service Alarm Phone.
"Yesterday [Tuesday, June 14] afternoon, our crew
rescued 63 people in peril at sea. They were on board a rubber dinghy and were
fleeing the civil war in Libya. On board the boat were seven women, 25 men and
31 minors, including one baby," Sea-Eye tweeted.
All the people are reportedly healthy, but some of the
people needed rehydrating after suffering from sea-sickness and dehydration.
Others had small injuries and pain and needed help from the on-board medics,
according to Sea-Eye.
Destination Italy?
The Sea-Eye 4 set sail on its latest mission on June 5. For
the first week of any mission, crews often train to make sure their rescue
techniques are as fast and safe as possible, while sailing towards the search
and rescue zones where most migrant boats get into trouble.
The Sea-Eye 4 began its service for Sea-Eye in 2021.
According to the organization's website, the boat can travel at a speed of up
to 11 knots and is 53 meters long. It can accommodate up to 26 crew members and
hundreds of rescued migrants.
Neither boat has yet announced that it is waiting to be
assigned a safe harbor, in which to disembark those rescued. However, over the
last few months, all private rescue ships have eventually disembarked rescued
passengers in Italian ports.
According to the Italian government's latest figures,
updated on June 14, almost 22,000 (21,945) people have arrived in the country
by boat across the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year.