Rescue Vessels Pulls Out About 450 Migrants From Boat Off Tunisia

On Sunday, two humanitarian rescue vessels pulled out almost 450 migrants onboard an overcrowded wooden boat. The boat was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea. In another entirely separate incident, several Tunisian migrants reached Sardinia. Sardinia is an Italian island.

The French humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee tweeted that German and the French NGO vessels named Sea-Watch 3 and Ocean Viking were involved in rescuing efforts. Together the vessels rescued the migrants from Tunisian waters, around 68 kms from the coast.

The Sea-Watch 3 vessel took charge of the entire rescue mission and took in 141 survivors. The Ocean Viking vessel took up the rest of the survivors. The five-hour long rescue operation received support from yacht Nadir and German NGO ResQ Ship.

Representation Image – Credits: Vito Manzari/wikipedia.org

The charity groups informed newspersons that they were awaiting authorization to dock the rescued migrants at some southern European ports.

Eyewitnesses informed that the wooden boat was crammed with migrants. It was in water, however, the engines weren’t functioning. There was no yet definite record of deaths and injuries of any migrants.

Many of the migrants in the rescue were seen jumping off the boat and trying to swim to the rescue vessels. The migrants were mostly men from countries such as Morocco, Bangladesh, Syria and Egypt.

The improved weather conditions have seen a spate of migrants coming to Italy and other parts of Europe from Libya, Tunisia and others.

As per the United Nations-affiliated International Organisation for Migration, a quantum number of people- more than 1,146 individuals who are escaping the crisis of poverty and Middle East-Africa conflict vanished over the last six months in the Mediterranean Sea.

SOS Mediterranee also informed that since February 2016, it had rescued over 30,000 people.

Reference: indianexpress.com

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Source: Maritime Shipping News