SOS Méditerranée’s humanitarian ship, the Ocean Viking, rescued 196 people, including nine unaccompanied minors and a woman, on the morning of July 30, during two rescue operations.

The rescue took place off the coast of Libya. "Most of the survivors are from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan," SOS Méditerranée said. The first "overloaded wooden boat" with 96 people on board was spotted early in the morning. A second was spotted shortly after, with 100 people.

Italian authorities have given the city of Ancona (in the east of Italy), "nearly 1,500 kilometers from the intervention zone, as a safe place to disembark," the NGO said. "It is once again an extremely remote port, which requires the teams and survivors to sail for several days," SOS Méditerranée lamented. "This practice of assigning remote ports is draining the central Mediterranean of its rare vital search and rescue resources."

Prolonged absence far from rescue zones

NGOs argue that the Italian law -- via the Piantedosi Directive which hinders the action of humanitarian ships at sea -- violates maritime law. They also fear that rescue boats' prolonged absence will cause more deaths at sea.

Earlier this year, SOS Humanity published data showing that in 2023, rescue ships in the Mediterranean lost 374 days making long journeys to reach Italian ports of disembarkation instead of staying at sea to assist boats in distress.

In the summer, attempts to cross the Mediterranean increase due to the weather -- considered to be milder. But the journey is nonetheless highly dangerous. On July 25th, the German NGO Sea-Watch also rescued 156 people on two wooden boats. Some survivors had been poisoned by fuel fumes and got treated on board the rescue ship. These fumes slowly kill people trapped in the boats, who breathe in the toxic fumes coming out of the engines for several hours.

The week before, the humanitarian ships Geo Barents and Aurora had provided assistance to 297 migrants in the Mediterranean, while the Italian coastguard had rescued 126 people off the coast of Lampedusa.

But some migrants are not rescued in time. NGOs regularly talk of "ghost boats”: boats spotted by humanitarians - before they lose all contact with them. Other boats do not call for help, and sink at sea without leaving a trace, without anyone knowing.

Since January, 1,098 migrants have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), compared to 3,155 in 2023.

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 deadliest migration routes worldwide.