At Least 74 Drown After Migrant Boat Breaks Down Off Libya Coast
The video was posted by Spanish refugee rescue charity Open Arms showing the rescue of a group of migrants whose boat was capsized. The woman in the video is the mother of Joseph, a 6-months old boy who was one of the occupants of a migrant boat that capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya on Wednesday.
It is a heart-wrenching video to watch - showing a mother frantically looking for her child, and screaming as she was being rescued.
¡°Where is my baby? I lose my baby. Find my baby, find my baby,¡± the woman can be heard in the video.
Escuchad el sonido del naufragio que vivimos ayer.
¡ª Open Arms (@openarms_fund) November 12, 2020
El grito desesperado de una madre en busca de su beb¨¦ de 6 meses de vida, en medio del caos.
Le recuperamos del mar en parada respiratoria,remont¨®, pero horas m¨¢s tarde su peque?o cuerpo no resisti¨®.
Ella es la madre de Joseph? pic.twitter.com/mYzXLq1jxi
The video was posted by Spanish refugee rescue charity Open Arms showing the rescue of a group of migrants whose boat was capsized.
AP
The woman in the video is the mother of Joseph, a 6-month old boy from Guinea, who was one of the occupants of a migrant boat that capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya on Wednesday.
While the rescue teams found Joseph alive from the water, he did not survive and died hours later.
AP
According to the the United Nations' International Organization for Migration (IOM) at least 74 migrants have died in a shipwreck.
Over 120 people on board
According to the IOM, there were more than 120 people on board the dingy when the ¡°devastating¡± incident took place.
The Libyan coastguard and fisherman rescued 47 people, according to the IOM. This is at least the eighth shipwreck that occurred in the Central Mediterranean since October 1.
AP
¡°The mounting loss of life in the Mediterranean is a manifestation of the inability of states to take decisive action to redeploy much needed, dedicated search and rescue capacity in the deadliest sea-crossing in the world,¡± said Federico Soda, IOM Libya chief of mission.
? We have long called for a change in the unworkable approach to Libya and the Mediterranean, including establishing a clear disembarkation mechanism followed by solidarity.
¡ª Federico Soda (@fedsoda) November 12, 2020
Thousands of people continue to pay the price for inaction at sea and on land.https://t.co/BWRRGzgzKb
The IOM said that it had noticed a recent surge in the number of departures from the Libyan shores, with over 780 arrivals in Italy since the beginning of October. More than 11,000 migrants had been intercepted and returned to Libya, where they face the risk of human rights violations and detention, read the IOM statement.
"IOM maintains that Libya is not a safe port for return and reiterates its call on the international community and the European Union to take urgent and concrete action to end the cycle of return and exploitation,'' added the statement.
AP
The waters of the Mediterranean has turned into a graveyard for migrants, especially those from African countries trying to reach Europe on boats.
In the years since the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, war-torn Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants hoping to get to Europe from Africa and the Middle East.
Smugglers often pack desperate families into ill-equipped rubber boats that stall and founder along the perilous Central Mediterranean route. At least 20,000 people have died in those waters since 2014, according to the IOM.
Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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