After six rescue operation in a few days, SOS Méditerranée’s Ocean Viking picked up 369 new migrants in the Mediterranean on Sunday night, according to the NGO.
According to SOS Mediterranean’s Twitter feed, the ship now has 572 survivors on board.
The recent rescue involved a “large wooden boat” reported “in distress in the Libyan search and rescue region” late Sunday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the NGO told AFP.
Reports also revealed that at around 10:00 p.m., the boat was spotted on radar and then visually, and rescue operations lasted more than 5 hours. According to SOS Méditerranée, 9 mothers, 1 infant, 2 children, and 110 unaccompanied juveniles from Egypt, Bangladesh, and Eritrea were among the 369 persons saved on board.
Ocean Viking had already rescued 71 migrants in distress in a dangerously overloaded wooden boat in the Maltese search and rescue zone on Sunday afternoon.
Its passengers were escaping Libya, where they had left three days prior, and were weary at the time of the rescue due to a lack of food and water on board.Ocean Viking landed 236 migrants rescued at sea in Siberia on May 1.
The ship then spent several weeks in dry dock in Naples for repairs before setting sail again from Marseille.
United Nations in a recent report, criticized Libya and the European Union for reforming their search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea, saying that current practices deprive migrants of their rights and dignity, if not take their lives.
Since the beginning of 2021, 866 migrants have lost their lives in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
SOS Méditerranée claims to have rescued more than 30,000 people since February 2016, first with the Aquarius, then the Ocean Viking.
AFP