Rescue group: Libya left migrants to die in Mediterranean

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 the North African nation.

Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish rescue group, said it had found one woman alive yesterday and another dead, along with the body of a toddler, amid the drifting remains of a destroyed migrant boat 80 nautical miles off the Libyan coast.

The organisation posted images 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.

Libyan coast guard spokesman Ayoub Gassim said earlier that a boat carrying 158 passengers, including 34 women and nine children, had been stopped on Monday off the coast of the western town of Khoms. He said the migrants were given humanitarian and medical aid and were taken to a refugee camp in Khoms.

Libya has emerged as a major transit point to Europe for those fleeing poverty and civil war in Africa and the Middle East. Traffickers have exploited Libya’s chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

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 so. Human rights activists have sharply criticised that assistance, saying migrants being returned to Libya are at risk of facing beatings, abuse, rape and slavery.

The head of Proactiva Open Arms, Oscar Camps, yesterday blamed the Italian government’s co-operation with Libyan authorities for the death of the woman 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 women and the toddler had refused to board the Libyan vessels with the rest of the intercepted migrants, and the three were abandoned in the sea after the Libyan coast guard destroyed the migrants’ boat.

He also said their deaths were the result of not allowing aid groups like Proactiva to work in the Mediterranean. Some 1,443 people are thought to have died or gone missing along the dangerous Mediterranean route up to 15 July, according to the UN migration agency.

Both Italy and Malta have blocked aid groups from operating rescue boats, either by refusing them entry to their ports or by impounding their vessels and placing their crews under investigation.

Italy’s hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini yesterday rejected any criticism of his country’s stance on migration.

“Lies and insults from some foreign NGO confirm that we are right: reducing the departures and disembarkations means reducing deaths and reducing the earnings of those who speculate on clandestine migration,” Salvini said in a Facebook post.

The recent political turmoil in Europe over migration has come even as the overall number of migrants arriving has dropped by more than half since last year.

The UN migration agency has said the number of migrants and refugees reaching Spain by sea this year has overtaken those arriving in Italy.

The International Organization for Migration said yesterday that Spain had seen the arrival of 18,016 migrants up to 15 July, while 17,827 people had landed in Italy during the same period.