Video footage posted by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) allegedly shows armed men putting some of the women and children from an overcrowded migrant boat off Libya onto a speedboat and speeding away.
A rubber dinghy, reportedly carrying about 112 migrants, got into difficulty off the Libyan coast when it started deflating on Thursday (November 28). Dozens of men and boys who were aboard the dinghy jumped into the sea, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Before the humanitarian rescue ship Geo Barents arrived on the scene, two boats, "which identified themselves as belonging to the Libyan coast guard were nearby," reported the news agency Associated Press (AP).
"Armed men forcibly took away women and children at gunpoint to return them to Libya, separating families," wrote the humanitarian charity on the social media platform X on Friday (November 29).
One speedboat reportedly took on board 24 women and four children.
MSF spokesperson Maurizio Debbane stated that the Geo Barents' crew had been told that the speedboat would hand over the women and children once the rescue of the men had been completed. But instead, they sped away.
Currently, the fate of the women and children on board the Libyan boats is unknown, reports AP.
29 abducted, 83 rescued
MSF estimates that at least 29 women and girls were among those taken off the boat, while 83 boys and men were rescued by the MSF crew. They disembarked in Reggio Calabria on Saturday (November 30). The nationalities of those rescued was reported as Eritrean, Yemeni and Ethiopian.
According to MSF, the interception happened before the arrival of the Geo Barents in the area. One of the rescued migrants told MSF teams, "They beat us with the butt of their rifles to silence us. Then, at gunpoint, they took the women and children."
A psychologist on board the Geo Barents, Mara, gathered the stories of some of the survivors. During the rescue operation, one man wanted to jump from the MSF fast boats, explains Mara, "to try and recover his wife and two small children, who were held forcefully on a Libyan fast boat." The children were reportedly a baby of just four months and a ten-year-old.
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Crying all night
The man, explains Mara, "stayed up all night crying and asking us about his family. He told us, two boats shot in the air and in the water to make us stop. They took all the phones and money they could find on us. People started yelling and crying."
The man told Mara that he had tried to climb on the Libyan rib when his wife and children were taken, but the Libyans pushed him back.
MSF has called upon international organizations and countries to try and reunite these families.
Intercepted and returned to Libya
According to data from Italy’s Interior Ministry, last updated on November 29, more than 62,500 migrants have arrived in Italy by small boat since the beginning of the year.
The majority of those arrivals come from Bangladesh (more than 12,000), with Syrian (11,600) and Tunisian (7,598) nationals also accounting for fairly large groups of arrivals.
Between November 17 and November 23, the UN Migration Agency IOM’s Libya office reported that 353 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya. So far since the beginning of the year, the same office reports that more than 20,000 migrants have been intercepted and returned to Libya.
The number of interceptions is already greater than for the whole of 2023, notes the IOM, but slightly fewer, at the moment than interceptions during the whole of 2022. However, during that year, more than double the number of migrants arrived in Italy, so the proportion of interceptions is greater this year than in 2022, compared to those attempting the crossing.
Fulvia Conte, a spokesperson for MSF, speaking in Italian in a video posted on La Stampa, said that those rescued, along with the whole MSF team were "extremely worried about the intercepted migrants, who would now have to undergo a further cycle of violence, detention and abuse that takes place in Libya."
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