Port of Pozzallo designated for disembarkation.
After the first operation, in collaboration with the Italian Coast Guard, two more rescues were carried out between Saturday and Sunday by the ship MARE JONIO, assisted by the Catholic Foundation's sailing boat.

As soon as the MARE JONIO passed the island of Lampedusa on Saturday afternoon, 24 August, flanked by the sailing boat MIGRANTES, it received numerous reports of boats in distress fleeing from Libya and Tunisia.

In particular, thanks to overflights by the civilian Colibri observation plane of Pilotes Volontaires, the ship by MEDITERRANEA Saving Humans was able to locate and intercept a wooden boat about to sink with 67 people on board, including 16 women and 15 small children. Our rescue team reached the boat in distress in the corridor between Tunisia and Lampedusa, about 25 nautical miles from the pelagic island, and immediately started distributing life jackets, stabilising and securing the vessel.

A few minutes after the communication from the MARE JONIO, a Coast Guard SAR patrol boat, the CP311, arrived on the scene and rescued the people in distress and took them to Lampedusa.

MARE JONIO, together with the support vessel MIGRANTES, was thus able to continue its southward patrol of the central Mediterranean, checking the numerous alerts received from Alarm Phone and civil aircraft, as well as the positions of vessels in distress reported by radio by Tunisian and Sicilian fishermen.

On Saturday night, MARE JONIO had to carry out its second rescue operation after it had difficulty locating, in the dark, a dinghy overloaded with people, drifting with its tubes already deflated and in imminent danger of being shipwrecked in international waters more than 30 miles south of Lampedusa. 50 people were evacuated to the MARE JONIO, including 2 women and up to 43 unaccompanied minors, mostly Ethiopian nationals but also from Sudan. The dinghy had left Abu Kammash four days earlier and the long stay at sea had weakened the people, many of whom were suffering from severe dehydration.

Shortly after the rescue operation on board MEDITERRANEA’s ship had been completed - at around 2.40am - the Coast Guard patrol boat CP327 intervened and transferred the shipwrecked people from the MARE JONIO to enable them to disembark quickly in Lampedusa.

At this point, the MARE JONIO and the support vessel resumed their southward voyage towards the last known positions of 2 vessels in distress reported by the distress call: at around 6.10 am, with the first light of dawn on Sunday 25th, the bridge of the ship spotted a fibreglass vessel dangerously heeled over and in danger of sinking, almost 40 miles south of Lampedusa. On board were 65 people, including 5 unaccompanied minors of Syrian, Pakistani and Bengali nationality, who were rescued by the MEDITERRANEA Rescue Team in the third operation of this Mission 18. Once safely on board the MARE JONIO and receiving first aid from our medical team, it was noted that most of them showed signs of the violence they had suffered during their stay in Libya.

It is also important to underline that, although all 3 rescue operations took place in the SAR area under Maltese jurisdiction, the Maltese authorities, who had been informed, were never available and never offered their assistance in these cases. MARE JONIO has therefore always coordinated with its own flagship Maritime Rescue Centre, the IT MRCC in Rome, which has designated the port of Pozzallo as the "place of safety" for the last 65 people rescued. MEDITERRANEA’s ship is expected to arrive in the early hours of Monday 26 August.

Lampedusa-International waters, 25 August 2024