At approximately 0948 EST, reports began to emerge that the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) sponsored vessel, Geo Barents, rescued more than six hundred refugees on board a distressed vessel off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea. SkyNews reporters were embedded with the vessel and shared their exclusive findings.
EXCLUSIVE: Across ?@SkyNews? – we are in the Mediterranean as more than 600 migrants are rescued from a ship drifting near the coast of Italy.
It’s one of the biggest rescues in recent times in this – the most dangerous migrant route in the world pic.twitter.com/MjUletN6nQ— Adam Parsons (@adamparsons) May 29, 2023
According to SkyNews, nationals from Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria, and Pakistan were stranded after the captain of their vessel fled the night before. Of those 606 migrants, 141 are minors, 111 of whom are unaccompanied, and 16 are women, 5 of whom are accompanied minors, making this one of the largest single-day rescues in the Mediterranean. The vessel departed the Libyan port of Tobruk.
Local authorities in Bari, Italy are preparing to receive the large group with mobile medical teams and clinics established at San Paolo di Bari hospitals, in Altamura, Corato and Monopoli. 24 people need immediate medical care, with 14 of them being severe. These hospitals are prepared to provide surgeries to 10 people as soon as they land.
This is another chapter, albeit positive, in the dark and dangerous Libyan-Italian migration route that has claimed the lives of thousands, as refugees seek to flee their war-torn nations in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
