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ROME (AP) – European charity vessel Ocean Viking said Friday it has rescued another 135 migrants, including pregnant women and eight children, from a double-decker boat in Malta’s search and rescue area.
A total of 359 shipwreck survivors were on board the ship, operated by the humanitarian organization SOS Mediterrane, it said, adding that the ship was assigned to the remote port of Ancona in central Italy’s Marche region. .
“Such long journeys should never be imposed on people rescued at sea,” the rescue organization wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Nongovernmental organization Groups active in the central Mediterranean have repeatedly warned that the far-right-led Italian government’s policy of allocating ports further north is keeping rescue ships away from areas where they could save lives.
Migrants, primarily from the Middle East and Africa, often flee war and poverty in their home countries and seek a better life in European countries via the Mediterranean Sea.
Rome recently ordered ships to call at port after each rescue and punished other rescue groups by keeping their ships in port for 20 days at a time.
Ocean Viking has been blocked three times in three months, most recently from February 8th until a judge lifted the block 10 days later.
Friday’s rescue came a day after some people reported that survivors were rescued from a deflated rubber boat in the central Mediterranean on Thursday. Sixty people who left Libya with them over a week ago died during the journey.
Ocean Viking spotted the dinghy with 25 people on board on Wednesday. The two lost consciousness and were evacuated to the Sicily island of Lampedusa, about 97 kilometers north. The remaining 23 people were in critical condition, suffering from burns from the boat’s fuel, dehydration and exhaustion.
A spokesperson for SOS Méditerranée said the survivors were traumatized and unable to fully explain what happened during the voyage, adding that the survivors were still traumatized and unable to fully explain what happened during the voyage. It added that the number was unlikely to be confirmed.
Humanitarian organizations often rely on the testimonies of survivors when tallying the number of people presumed dead and missing at sea.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration said that as of March 11 this year, 227 people had died along the dangerous Central Mediterranean route, excluding newly reported missing persons and presumed dead. This is one of a total of 279 deaths in the Mediterranean since January 1. A total of 19,562 people arrived in Italy using this route during this period.
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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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