Rescue group accuses Libya of abandoning migrants at sea
Members of Proactiva Open Arms rescue a woman Tuesday in the Mediterranean.
MADRID — A migrant aid group has accused Libya’s coast guard of abandoning three people in the Mediterranean Sea, including a woman and a toddler who died, after intercepting 160 Europe-bound migrants near the shores of theNorth African nation.
Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish rescue group, said it found one woman alive Tuesday and another dead, along with the body of a toddler, amid the drifting remains of a destroyed migrant boat some 90 miles fromthe Libyan coast.
The organization posted photos and videos of the wreckage and the dead bodies on social media, accusing both a merchant ship sailing in international waters and Libya’s coast guard of failing to help the three migrants.
Ayoub Gassim, a spokesmanforLibya’s coast guard, responded to the Spanish aid group’s criticism late Tuesday, saying guard members carry out rescues of Europe-bound migrants “in accordance with international standards in saving lives at sea.”
The head of Proactiva Open Arms, Oscar Camps, on Tuesday blamed the Italian government’s cooperation with Libyan authorities for the death of thewoman and the toddler.
“This is the direct consequence of contracting armed militias to make the rest of Europe believe that Libya is a state, a government and a safe country,” Camps said in a video posted on Twitter.
Camps said the two womenand the toddler had refused to board the Libyan vessels with the rest of the intercepted migrants and were abandoned after the Libyan coast guard destroyed the migrants’ boat.
In a later statement, Campssaid, “The blame for this crime falls on Matteo Salvini’s policies,” a reference to Italy’s hard-line interior minister.
Some 1,443 people are dead or missing in the Mediterranean route, according to the U.N. migration agency, using figures up to Sunday.
Libya has emerged as a major transit point to Europe for those fleeing poverty and civil war in Africa and the Middle East, as traffickers exploit the chaos that has engulfed the country sinceanuprising in 2011.
Italy’s new populist government has vowed to halt the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean and has given aid to Libyan authorities to do that. Human rights activists have criticized that, saying migrants returned to Libya are at risk of facing beatings, rape and slavery.
Gassim said earlier that a boat carrying 158 passengers had been stopped Monday off the coast of the western town of Khoms. He said the migrants were given medical aid andwere taken to a refugee camp in Khoms.
Italy and Malta have blocked aid groups from operating rescue boats in the Mediterranean, either by refusing them entry to their ports or by impounding their vessels and putting their crews under investigation.
But Salvini on Tuesday rejected any criticism of his country’s stance on migration.
At the inauguration of a police station in Fermo, a townin central Italy, Salvini said, “I challenge anyone to find a tweet where I ask for a human being to be left to drown at sea.”
He continued: “My objective is to save everyone. To aid everyone. To heal everyone. To feed everyone. But to avoid everyone coming to Italy.”