Over 1,000 migrants rescued off Libyan coast, seven people dead

Over 1,000 people were rescued from dinghies off the coast of Libya and seven bodies recovered, in a mission coordinated by the Italian navy.

In a statement, the Navy said that squads on two patrol boats and two helicopters were still searching for survivors and other victims.

The Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) was radioed by the Italian Coast Guard just after 5am, and over the following three hours helped rescue over 1,000 people some 12 miles off Libya.

“Today it was intense for the fact that the rubber boats were jam-packed…they put as many people as they can…they put in 160 people in one boat, it was incredible,” MOAS onboard operations officer Marco Cauchi told Sky News. “These boats are built to only take 100 people. It was dangerously loaded. People were jumping out, fumes were coming up, people were fainting, so it was horrible.”

The Responder vessel started its rescue operation just after 5:30 am, when a small rescue boat was dispatched from the larger vessel and sent out towards a large dinghy packed with some 160 asylum seekers, including at least two babies.

Sky journalist Mark Stone, who was on board to witness the rescue, described how the operation took a turn for the worse once the migrants on board witnessed the Responder vessel approaching them.

“Initially, the rescue went to plan. The MOAS team distributed life jackets to the migrants, tried to calm them down and manouevre them towards the Responder ship,” he said. “As the Responder ship moved itself closer to the dinghy, the migrants panicked - brought on by a combination of the fact that it was dark, many of them can't swim and some had inhaled toxic fumes from low quality fuel on their boat.

In seconds, a textbook rescue turned into a nightmare. The migrant boat, filled only with air and completely inappropriate for the open seas, partially capsized, and at least 20 people fell into the water.”

He went on to recount how the rescue team dived into the water, and how some of the migrants panicked and “overwhelmed” one of the rescuers, casing him to swallow fuel from the dinghy and lose consciousness in the water.

He was spotted by the rescue coordinator monitoring the rescue from the bridge of the Responder, was rescued and has made a full recovery.

Hundreds of migrants, including those transferred from other ships, arrived on board the Responder within the next few hours. Seven corpses were also brought aboard the ship, placed carefully in body bags and laid in the ship’s morgue.

The Responder will now sail back to Italy, where the asylum seekers will be processed. 

115, 000 asylum seekers have landed in Italy this year as of the end of August, compared to 116,000 during the same period last year, in what has become Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War Two.

The death toll on the route from North Africa to Italy has increased to one person for every 42 making the crossing, compared to one in every 52 last year, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) said last week.