A 36-year-old Spanish volunteer, Anabel Montes Mier, told Rome daily la Repubblica that she is quitting migrant-rescue missions at sea in an interview published on Monday, May 15.

"I can't deal with it any longer: too much death, too much pain, too much hatred against us -- I am quitting," said the volunteer who gained international attention in 2017 when she was photographed with a baby in her arms rescued by crew members of the Open Arms vessel on which she was working.

The volunteer last week disembarked for good from the Geo Barents migrant-rescue ship operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). She said the decision was "extremely difficult".

'Diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder'

Anabel Montes Mier said the seven and a half years she spent at sea to participate in rescue operations "feel like 20". "I would do everything all over again, but the level of intensity, the emotional tension, the power of the events experienced have become unbearable," she commented.

"All the horrors I have seen and heard have turned a person like me, who has always felt strong, into a fragile one. As a rescuer, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Just try to imagine how the people who spent years in Libya must feel," she continued.

Montes said she rescued "thousands of people with their terrible stories, dozens of bodies, many more than I thought I would ever see."

The volunteer said that even the happiness she felt when rescuing lives was "stained by the awareness that few would be helped once they reached the mainland. The role of NGOs is to avoid that these people die at sea, then states should help them."

"Maybe the children, like the many babies I held in my arms, will be able to build a future for themselves, but what about the elderly? The other day, I disembarked in La Spezia with a woman who was over 60. What kind of life will she have? Will she end up in the street?", she wondered.

'I was insulted in every possible way -- hatred for NGOs'

The public perception of NGOs has changed, she claimed: "There is so much hatred, and I just can't understand why. I was insulted in every way, I was wished detention, rape, death. How is it possible that those who work to save lives are rewarded in such a way?"

The volunteer said her hardest experience was when she and other volunteers "were forced to choose" during a rescue operation.

"There were dozens of people in the water, I was on one of the RHIBs," rigid hull inflatable boats.

"I remember the imploring look of a young man who was holding his hand out, but we had to take the women and children first, and when we came back, he had gone under. I still feel haunted by those eyes today," she added.

Mier thinks "events are being manipulated" in the attempt to send NGOs "far away" from rescue zones to "close the only eyes" available in the Mediterranean."I saw the murderous indifference of Malta, Libyan coast guards financed by Europe shoot at us, the violence of people who claimed they wanted to rescue," she listed.

The volunteer said the baggage of such experiences is "invisible but huge".

"I will write what I carry inside -- I don't want any name, any story to get lost. I wish fair winds to all NGOs," the concluded.