Italy – (warsoor) – The horror, terror and joy felt during perilous rescues of migrant boats were captured in powerful new images published Wednesday, as the latest deadly episode in the Mediterranean fuelled calls for Europe to change tack on the crisis.
AFP photographer Aris Messinis was on board Spanish NGO boat The Astral as it battled to help a number of overcrowded rubber dinghies and a larger wooden vessel found in distress off the coast of Libya in a frantic operation that lasted from dawn until after dusk on Tuesday.
Almost 1,000 mainly African migrants were hauled to safety but 32 died as a result of toxic fumes or in the crush of too many bodies: 29 of them on one of the dinghies.
Gerard Canals, the Astral’s mission chief, told AFP the disaster could easily have been much worse as his relatively small boat was the only one in the area for all of Tuesday morning, having been first alerted to the distressed boats by the Libyan coastguard.
“It was a 19-hour rescue operation and after all that to have ‘only’ 32 people dead is something we can be almost proud of,” he said.
Almost 1,000 mainly African migrants were hauled to safety but 32 died as a result of toxic fumes or in the crush of too many bodies: 29 of them on one of the dinghies.
Gerard Canals, the Astral’s mission chief, told AFP the disaster could easily have been much worse as his relatively small boat was the only one in the area for all of Tuesday morning, having been first alerted to the distressed boats by the Libyan coastguard.
Source
AFP