Migrants face desperate choices
Father managed to save wife, child with just one life-jacket as boat sank
Desperate choices faced a Palestinian family who were tossed off a capsizing boat full of migrants into the Mediterranean Sea, with just one life-jacket.
The father’s heroic effort to save his wife and their toddler was among the most dramatic stories to emerge from two days of disasters for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
“I could only see heads, all around, amid the waves, everyone pushing down on everyone else to try and stay afloat,” said the father, Mohammed. “I dived under, ready to die to save my daughter,” he said, adding that he didn’t know how he managed to pull her to the surface and hold his wife afloat with one arm before they were picked up by rescuers.
Video made aboard the ship Dignity1 and released by Doctors Without Borders showed the family recovering from their ordeal. The mother kissed the hand of her daughter Azeel, a little more than a year old. Mohammed sat next to them.
“They all went into the water, with only one life-jacket,” said Juan Matias Gil, a Doctors Without Borders search and rescue operations field co-ordinator.
“So this life-jacket was with the father, who gave the life-jacket to his wife, because she didn’t know how to swim. After that he saw that the baby was getting deep in the water” and in danger of drowning.
Officials said the family was among 373 people who were saved after a fishing boat loaded with hundreds of migrants overturned on Wednesday, though 25 bodies were also recovered.
On Thursday, 381 people were saved by the Italian coast guard before their boat sank off the Libyan coast. In another rescue, the Italian navy plucked to safety 101 people who were crowded aboard a rubber dinghy in danger of sinking.
Also Thursday, smugglers took advantage of calm seas to send out a flotilla of boats, pushing the number of migrants needing rescue past 1,000 for the day. Among the boats were two small vessels which reached the Sardinian coast.
In a separate rescue Thursday morning, all 381 people aboard a fishing boat off the Libyan coast were taken aboard the Italian coast guard vessel Fiorillo, the coast guard said. Shortly after, the fishing boat sank, the coast guard said.
Officials from Ireland, whose navy vessel the Le Niamh was among the vessels on the scene Wednesday, said they were given an initial estimate of 600 migrants aboard the smugglers’ boat. If that estimate holds, as many as 200 migrants might have drowned.
The Le Niamh docked in Palermo, Sicily, late Thursday afternoon with 367 survivors aboard, along with 25 plain wooden coffins. Six other survivors were evacuated by helicopters for treatment.
As the Le Niamh pulled in, a little boy, peering between the metal railing of the ship, waved and gave a thumbs-up sign. A young girl, her head jerking back, appeared to collapse as she was scooped into the arms of one of the land-based personnel helping the survivors disembark.
“Some of the people are torn by grief. They lost their children, they couldn’t find them” in the seas, Giovanna Di Benedetto, a spokeswoman for the organization Save the Children, told Italian state TV on Palermo’s pier.
I could only see heads, all around, amid the waves, everyone pushing down on everyone else to try and stay afloat.