The humanitarian rescue ship of the Proactiva Open Arms has retrieved 39 people from the Mediterranean to join 121 others stranded 9 days ago waiting to be landed in a safe port.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on its website on Saturday, the director of the Proactiva Open Arms organization, said the boats had pulled out the 39 migrants at dawn in waters under Malta’s responsibility.
The latest rescue operation by Proactiva Open Arms raised the number of people stranded on the ship to 160 migrants, while the ports of Italy and Malta, as closest to the ship’s location, refused to land the stranded, and no negotiations have begun to reach an agreement on their transfer to any other European country, where the European Commission – which plays a Mediator role in NGO rescue ship crises – requesting a member state to intervene.
According to the Spanish organization, Malta, which is responsible for coordinating the latest rescue operation, has offered to transfer only 39 people to one of its ports, but Camps stressed that “it is unacceptable and dangerous for the safety of the ship to approach the coastguard boat to transport part of them while the rest remain on the ship for a long time“.
This comes a day after MSF’s Ocean Viking ship rescued 85 people, including 25 minors, off the Libyan coast.
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