The humanitarian group SOS Mediterranée has reported a “violent and deliberate attack” by the Libyan Coast Guard against its rescue vessel, the Ocean Viking, in international waters. The organization published photos as evidence, showing spent bullet casings and windows shattered by gunfire.
The incident occurred hours after the Ocean Viking had rescued dozens of people, including nine unaccompanied minors, from a rubber dinghy off the coast of Libya. “The 87 survivors and the crew are safe. We are working to reconstruct the events,” stated the NGO. The ship is now en route to Marina di Carrara, Italy, after the Italian Interior Ministry assigned it a port of safety.
Prior to the attack, SOS Mediterranée had protested the excessive distance to the assigned port, which is 1,300 kilometers from the rescue zone—a journey of three and a half days that would take the ship out of the rescue area for a significant period.
Solidarity was expressed by the NGO Sea Watch, which challenged the Italian government: “What else must happen for Italy to stop financing these dangerous criminal militias?”
The day was further marked by controversy as another NGO, Mediterranea Saving Humans, publicly disobeyed a directive from the Italian Interior Ministry. Instead of proceeding to the distant port of Genoa, their ship docked in Trapani, Sicily, with ten rescued migrants on board. “Human dignity and life come before any other consideration,” stated the organization’s president, Laura Marmorale. The survivors, including Iranian and Iraqi Kurds, Egyptians, Syrians, and three teenagers, had endured torture, violence, and scenes of death in Libya. Activists deemed it “unacceptable” to subject “traumatized shipwreck survivors” to an additional three-day, 1,000-kilometer journey to Liguria in three-meter-high waves.
The Italian Radicals party offered its full support and legal assistance, calling Mediterranea’s act “one of civil disobedience and full legality.” Secretary Filippo Blengino argued the crew “respected maritime law and the Constitution, not the government’s bureaucratic cruelty.”
Nicola Fratoianni of the Left-Green Alliance (Avs) stated simply, “Disobeying obtuse and unnecessarily cruel rules is a virtue.”
In a separate incident off the Libyan coast, the NGO vessel ‘Nadir’ rescued sixty African migrants, including a pregnant woman and a minor with severe burns. Before heading to Lampedusa, the crew also recovered the bodies of three Sudanese sisters, aged 17, 12, and 9.
In reaction, Save the Children issued a statement questioning, “How many more deaths of migrant girls, boys, and families must we witness before a coordinated search and rescue system is implemented to prevent such tragedies?” They called for a system that combats human trafficking and allows SAR vessels to continue saving lives at sea.