More migrants reported missing in the Mediterranean

At least 21 migrants reported missing and two found dead after two rescue operations in the Mediterranean as migrant boats attempted to reach Italy.
SOS Mediterranee, a humanitarian rescue organisation, said the rescued migrants are mainly from West Africa but also from Sudan and South Sudan; among them 3 women, one of whom is pregnant, and 14 unaccompanied children.

The migrants who reached the Italian port of Pozzalo on 6 March were first rescued by a Cypriot merchant vessel off the coast of North Africa, and handed over to the humanitarian ship Aquarius, jointly operated by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
According to SOS Mediterranee, thirty were rescued from a sinking wooden boat, and according to survivors, 21 people including at least one pregnant woman died in that shipwreck.

“We were 51 in the wooden boat. But when the people panicked at night and the boat practically capsized, people fell into the water,” a young Gambian migrant told SOS Mediterranee.

“There had been 5 women on board, 4 drowned, including one pregnant woman. I have lost my brother,” the Gambian man said.
According to IOM spokesman Joel Millman, two dead infants had been discovered on board the wooden boat, bringing the likely death toll to 23.
Another 42 were saved after they jumped out of a rubber dinghy to avoid being intercepted by the Libyan coastguard who would rescue and return them to Libya. Those in the second group said that 90 people were taken back to Libya by the Libyan coastguard.
A man rescued by the Aquarius told MSF that he heard his 7 year old niece saying, “Uncle don’t leave me,” just before she was taken aboard the Libyan coast guard boat to Libya.

“We do not know exactly how it happened but families have been separated and we are trying to see how to bring them back together,” Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for IOM in Italy, told AFP.

According to the Libya Observer, the Security Directorate of Zuwara said it had rescued 97 migrants off Farwa Island, about 40 km to the west of Zuwara, near the Libyan-Tunisian border. The rescued migrants were taken to Zuwara and later transferred to specialised authorities in the city.
SOS Mediteranee reported that a patrol boat from the Libyan coastguard had approached the Aquarius as it tried to conduct its rescue operation. The boat had approached at high speed and did not respond to radio calls from the Aquarius. The Libyan coastguard later declared that it was assuming coordination for the rescue operation of the boat in distress.

SOS Mediterranee rescue coordinator Nocola Stalla said: “The perilous and illegal behaviour of the Libyan coastguard units only emphasise once again the dangers of this area of the sea, which is already the most deadly of the world.”
At least 421 migrants are estimated to have already died in the Mediterranean in the first nine weeks of in 2018.