Group says Libyan coast guard fired photographs over rescue ship

A spokesman for the coast guard didn’t reply to a request for remark. The Italian coast guard mentioned it had acquired a report concerning the incident, however complained that SOS Mediterranee didn’t observe right procedures in reporting it.

The Ocean Viking, a rescue ship chartered and run by the non-profit SOS Mediterranee, was responding to a misery name to assist the rubber boat carrying migrants within the Mediterranean Sea when a Libyan coast guard vessel arrived on the scene, the group mentioned.

The Libyan coast guard vessel “dangerously” approached the rescue ship, threatening its crew “with weapons and firing gunshots within the air,” the SOS Mediterranee mentioned in a press release.

The coast guard was caught on digicam threatening the vessel and firing a weapon into the air. Within the footage, the coast guard vessel is seen touring at a excessive charge of velocity earlier than maneuvering, apparently to stop the Ocean Viking from reaching the migrant boat. At one level, gun photographs are heard.

“You possibly can’t shoot at us. You possibly can’t shoot at us. We’re leaving the waters now,” an individual on the Ocean Viking is heard saying.

Beneath menace, the Ocean Viking sailed away whereas the Libyan coast guard intercepted the boat and “forcibly” took the migrants again to war-wrecked Libya, it mentioned.

Seabird 2, a civil surveillance aircraft owned by the German non-governmental group Sea-Watch, reported seeing migrants who had fallen overboard from the rubber boat earlier than the coast guard recovered them.

In additional footage from the group’s civil surveillance aircraft, the coast guard was seen maneuvering and approaching the rubber boat, earlier than forcing the migrants to disembark on the coast guard vessel. Gunshots had been additionally heard within the footage, with individuals on board the surveillance aircraft saying, “They’re taking pictures within the water … They’re taking pictures on the individuals.”

Saturday’s incident was the most recent report from European NGOs working within the Mediterranean Sea of threats or violent conduct by the Libyan coast guard, which is skilled and financed by the European Union, a part of efforts to stem the stream of migrants from the North African nation in direction of Italian shores.

Libya has in recent times emerged because the dominant transit level for migrants searching for a greater high quality of life in Europe. The oil-rich nation plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed rebellion that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Human traffickers have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants throughout the nation’s prolonged borders with six nations. The migrants are then packed into ill-equipped rubber boats and different vessels and set off on dangerous sea voyages.

Up to now this 12 months, some 20,000 migrants have arrived in Italy, far exceeding the 6,000 who got here in the identical interval in every of the previous years, in accordance with Inside Ministry figures.

Over the weekend alone, an estimated 3,300 migrants — many departing on small boats from Libya or Tunisia’s coastal metropolis of Sfax — had been rescued within the Mediterranean and had been heading towards Italian ports to disembark, the Italian coast guard mentioned.

At the very least three rescues had been performed by the Louise Michel rescue ship, which is financed by the road artist Banksy. The group mentioned its vessel was detained Friday off Lampedusa after it rescued 180 individuals in a number of operations. Thirty-four had been plucked from the water after their boat capsized.

The Italian coast guard mentioned the vessel had been seized as a result of the crew disobeyed orders to move to a port in Trapani, Sicily after the primary rescue and as an alternative picked up different migrants in three different rescues. The coast guard mentioned that disobedience put migrants in danger and sophisticated its personal efforts to coordinate rescues throughout a very busy weekend.

“The directions given to the NGO ship, given its small dimension, had been additionally geared toward stopping it from taking up board so many individuals that may jeopardize each its security and that of the migrant boats it might be rescuing,” the coast guard mentioned in a press release.

It added that the NGO plane that had been additionally sending stories of boats in misery “overloaded the communications system” of the Italian coordination middle, duplicating alerts that authorities plane had been already offering.

In current months, the hard-line Italian authorities of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made it tougher for humanitarian vessels to function, usually assigning ships to ports farther north after a single rescue, which the teams say limits their potential to save lots of lives.

Meloni’s allies say the presence of so many rescue ships within the Mediterranean encourages migrants to threat their lives on smuggler boats.

Related Press author Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.