Baby dies amid migrant rescue in Mediterranean

ROME: A three-month old baby has died after being picked up by rescuers at sea off Libya, because bad weather and a lack of boats made a medical evacuation impossible, aid organisations said on Thursday.

Over 1,600 migrants have been rescued in the Mediterranean since Tuesday, including many women and children. While some were brought to land on Thursday, hundreds of others could be trapped for days yet by stormy seas.

The Proactiva Open Arms and Sea Watch 3, which have plucked over 700 people from unseaworthy vessels between them, are too small to attempt the rough crossing back towards Italy with that number of people aboard.

They are currently being forced to take shelter off the coast of Tunisia until the weather calms.

“This is one of the most difficult situations we have had to face so far,” Laura Lanuza, spokesperson for the Spanish organisation Proactiva, said.

On Tuesday, Proactiva’s medical team sounded the alarm over an 18-year-old woman who had been rescued but whose life was in danger after a difficult delivery.

She and her four-day-old baby were evacuated by helicopter in the evening.

But in the confusion following the rescue operations on the overcrowded Proactiva, the doctor did not immediately spot among the 28 babies on board a three-month old Eritrean suffering from malnutrition and a high fever.

Proactiva asked for another medical evacuation on Wednesday, but it never came and the child died overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, Lanuza said. — AFP