90 More Migrants Rescued In Malta’s Search And Rescue Region Now Off Lampedusa Coast Awaiting Instructions
Another group of about 90 migrants, mostly from Bangladesh, are currently on a vessel off the coast of Lampedusa awaiting further instructions rescued in Malta’s search and rescue region.
Spotted off Malta’s southwestern coast earlier this weekend, the group had been taken aboard the merchant ship Marina after being spotted in the island’s Search and Rescue Zone on a wooden boat and sent to Lampedusa.
The rescue operation, which was coordinated by Malta and Italy, was initially reported to see the migrants being taken aboard a Captain Morgan ship some 13 miles off the coast of Malta. However, sources have said that this is not the case and the vessel has instead sailed the migrants to Lampedusa.
According to former OPM official Neville Gafa’, this latest group of migrants was part of a “days-long operation” using social networking sites (mostly Facebook) through which these people could ensure a place on the boat and successfully flee Libya.
+++ BREAKING +++ A boat in distress with ~90 people in Maltese SAR just reached out to #Alarmphone. We alerted authorities to launch a rescue immediately without delay! @guardiacostiera @Armed_Forces_MT pic.twitter.com/UhaNHBttIj
— Alarm Phone (@alarm_phone) May 2, 2020
Earlier this year, Gafa’ had said his recent work in Libya prevented thousands of irregular migrants from reaching Malta’s shores, therefore avoiding the escalation of a “national crisis”.
“The number of irregular migrants who would have entered Malta between July 2018 and January 2020, the period during which I was coordinating these operations, would have been phenomenal,” Gafa said in a Facebook post.
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