At dawn on Wednesday (July 10), the medical humanitarian organization Emergency announced that the crew of its private rescue ship operating in the Central Mediterranean had rescued 74 migrants from two boats. One vessel was carrying 41 people, and the other 33.

"The two boats were overcrowded and people on board did not have any life vests," explained Jonathan Nanì La Terra, search and rescue team leader on board the Life Support ship. He added that among the 74 migrants were five women and five unaccompanied minors. There is also a man who lost a leg in a Syrian bombing raid in 2014, added Crescenzo Caiazza, the nurse on board Life Support.

According to a press release from the organization Emergency, the ship has been assigned the port of Civitavecchia, just north of Rome on Italy’s west coast. The crew hopes to disembark those rescued on Friday, July 12.

Rescued in Maltese SAR waters

According to Emergency, the rescue took place in international waters, in the Maltese Search and Rescue (SAR) zone just after 5 am on Wednesday.

The migrants told the Life Support crew that they had set off from Tagiura in Libya around midnight -- a few hours before they were found. Each boat was about seven meters long. Although the crew said the boats had left about half an hour apart, they had ended up close to each other in the Mediterranean.

Most on board came from Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Life Support crew reported that no one was suffering from anything serious but there were a few cases of dehydration and seasickness.

This is Life Support’s 21st mission since it was launched in December 2022. Emergency states the crews on board have helped save a total of 1,752 people.

Ocean Viking

On July 9, the organization SOS Mediterranee, which operates the Ocean Viking rescue ship, announced on its X page that its crew had picked up 120 migrants and were helping transport them towards the port Marina Di Carrara on the Tuscan coast.

During the rescue, stated the organization, "two unidentified boats, with masked men approached the migrant ships, with people still on board and created panic, causing people to throw themselves in the water." SOS Mediterranee said that among those rescued were four women and three children.

The crew of Ocean Viking had already picked up 27 migrants from a wooden boat, and then came across another boat carrying 93 people.

Sea-Eye: Five rescues in 24 hours

Even earlier in the week, the organization Sea-Eye, based in Germany, which operates the rescue ship Sea-Eye 4 in the Central Mediterranean, said that 231 migrants had been rescued in the Central Mediterranean over the course of 24 hours starting on July 7.

After receiving a call from the organization Alarm Phone, which monitors migrant journeys towards Europe, the crew of the Sea-Eye 4 said they helped evacuate 46 migrants from a boat.

Just a few hours later, the sailing rescue boat Nadir, operated by the organization Resqship, assisted 22 people, including a mother and her baby, off a rubber boat that was beginning to lose air and fill with water. The migrants were transferred onto the Sea-Eye 4 a few hours later, as the Nadir has limited capacity on board.

In the early hours of July 8, the Sea-Eye 4 came across a further 10 people on board a fiberglass boat and took them on board too. Later on that morning, the crews of both Sea-Eye 4 and Nadir helped bring 58 people from a wooden boat that was filling with water on board their ship.

The rescues didn’t end there, states the press release. Shortly after midday, the crew of the Sea-Eye 4 came across another boat with 57 people on board, including a highly pregnant woman.

The director of the organization Sea-Eye, Gorden Isler, said that "five rescues in 24 hours, that shows what kind of emergency situation is unfolding in the Mediterranean at the moment. And also how important it is that boats like us are present to help rescue people."

Six days sailing to arrive in Genoa

The Sea-Eye 4 has been asked to head to the port of Genoa, which is, according to Isler, about six days sailing away from their current position. Genoa is on the west coast of Italy, right up in the north of the country, not too far away from the French coast. The Sea-Eye 4 is hoping to reach Genoa by July 11. 

Isler said because of Italian government policy, which requires private rescue ships to sail further and further away from the SAR zones, they were "losing precious time, away from the SAR zones, when we could be helping to save people’s lives."

In this particular series of rescues, added Isler, there was a highly pregnant woman who needed urgent medical attention, as well as several people who were suffering from fuel burns and dehydration after spending several days at sea.

Since the beginning of the year, 27,744 migrants have reached Italian shores by small boats. Many of them were brought in by the Italian coast guard, or border and finance police, Guardia di Finanza.

Note from the editors: Humanitarian rescue ships, when on mission, are only active in a limited area of the Mediterranean Sea, and only at arbitrary times. The presence of these NGO ships is no guarantee that individuals crossing the Mediterranean Sea on unseaworthy boats will be spotted and rescued. Distress cases are very common for boats unequipped to make a journey on the open sea, and shipwrecks and disappearances, including unrecorded ones, happen regularly. The Central Mediterranean remains one of the most deadly migration routes worldwide.