A boat carrying about 500 asylum seekers, including pregnant women and a newborn baby, has gone missing in the central Mediterranean, says two humanitarian organisations.
Alarm Phone, a
group that responds to distress calls from refugee boats, reported on Friday, that
they had been unable to maintain communication with the vessel since Wednesday
morning.
At the time, the boat was adrift with no
working engine in high seas about 320km (200 miles) north of the Libyan port of
Benghazi and more than 400km (250 miles) away from Malta and Italy’s southern
island of Sicily.
Italian NGO Emergency said on Thursday that
its Life Support ship and the Ocean Viking, another charity vessel, had looked
for the missing boat for 24 hours but found no sign of it or any shipwreck.
A spokesperson for Emergency said on Friday
that the search was continuing, adding that the people onboard might have been
picked up by another boat or may have managed to fix their engine and continue
sailing towards Sicily.
The Italian coastguard on Thursday reported
the rescue of 423 people and 671 people in two separate operations in Italian
search and rescue waters, and Alarm Phone said they were unrelated to the
missing boat.
In a separate incident, the German charity
SOS Humanity said 27 people were picked up at sea by an oil tanker and illegally
taken back to Libya.
Under international humanitarian law, asylum
seekers cannot be forcibly returned to countries where they risk harsh
treatment, and widespread refugee abuse has been extensively documented in
Libya.
Performance Shipping, the Greek company that
owns the P Long Beach tanker allegedly involved in the incident, did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
European governments have taken an
increasingly hard line on migration, including in Italy, which is facing a
surge in sea arrivals.
More than 47,000 refugees have arrived by
boat so far this year, up from about 18,000 in the same period of 2022.
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