Two civil search and rescue ships – Humanity 1 and Ocean Viking – found migrants drifting in the Mediterranean. They rescued 83 people, including at least three children.
The group operating the Humanity 1 rescue ship, SOS Humanity, announced Thursday (October 10) that its crew had rescued 36 people – among them unaccompanied minors – who were in distress at sea. The rescue was coordinated by the Italian authorities, the group said on X.
The migrants had been traveling in an unseaworthy and overcrowded fiberglass boat, according to Humanity 1's crew. The ship was ordered to take the migrants to the southern Calabrian port of Crotone, where it was due to arrive on Friday afternoon.
Ocean Viking rescue
Also on Thursday, the Ocean Viking, operated by SOS Mediterranee, said it had pulled six people directly from the water in the Libyan search and rescue (SAR) zone during the night. On the morning of October 10, it found a further 41 people crammed into a fiberglass boat in the Maltese SAR.
Three of the 47 migrants currently on board the Ocean Viking are children, said SOS Mediterranee. The group gave no information about a destination port, but it appeared to be headed toward Ravenna, on Italy's northeast coast.
Arrivals in Italy
The number of migrants reaching Italy by boat has fallen relative to 2023. Interior ministry figures from October 10 indicate that 52,108 migrants have arrived in the country since the beginning of 2024.
The number of unaccompanied minor (UAM) arrivals has dropped significantly: From the start of this year to October 7, Italy registered 6,123 UAMs. The number of UAMs arriving in 2023 was 18,820.
The largest national group of migrants currently reaching Italy are people from Bangladesh. Bangladeshis account for more than 10,000 of those arriving so far this year. The second-largest group are Syrian nationals (nearly 10,000), followed by Tunisians (over 7,000).
'Dying elsewhere'
The current Italian government has made much of the fall in the number of arrivals this year; attributing it to its tougher policies and multiple agreements with countries such as Tunisia and Libya.
However, human rights organizations have criticized this analysis, saying that it comes at a huge cost to migrants who are facing more ill-treatment in countries of departure. The Italian organization Melting Pot reported in September that fewer arrivals didn’t mean that people had stopped leaving their countries but that they were "dying elsewhere."
Rights groups say the large sums of money linked to migration agreements make Italy and Europe complicit in human rights abuses suffered by migrants in North Africa. This abuse includes rape, torture, violence and death, as well frequent pushbacks and mistreatment at the hands of both the authorities and militia groups in Libya and Tunisia.
On October 9, the rescue organization Mediterranea Saving Humans posted that its rescue ship Mare Jonio had set off from Trapani on its 19th mission.
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.