On Wednesday (June 25), the Seabird 1 aircraft discovered the bodies of five people floating in international waters off the Libyan coast.

That's according to German NGO Sea-Watch, which operates the Seabird 1. The organization also released a picture on its BlueSky account that appears to show a dead body floating in the water.

Sea-Watch spokesperson Paul Wagner told InfoMigrants that the Seabird 1 also notified the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome, which subsequently sent out a satellite message equivalent to a maday relay about the bodies on behalf of the Libyan coast guards, Wagner said. He added that later on, a Frontex plane similar to the Seabird 1 flew above the area of the floating bodies.

However, "the bodies have not been recovered to the best of Sea-Watch's knowledge," according to Sea-Watch.

While the circumstances of the persons' deaths and their identities "remain unknown", according to the non-profit, the bodies likely belonged to migrants who had died in a so-called invisible shipwreck, which refers to shipwrecks without survivors that are nearly impossible to verify.

"We fear there may be more bodies in the area," Sea-Watch added.

Read AlsoOcean Viking, Sea Watch vessels disembark migrants in Italy

Nearby Libyan vessel allegedly remained inactive

Although a vessel Sea-Watch identified as 'P300', which is reportedly affiliated with the Libyan General Administration of Coastal Security (GACS), was around twelve kilometers away from one of the bodies, Sea-Watch said in a press release published Thursday, the vessel "refused to respond to any of the aircrew's radio calls."

When Sea-Watch plane Seabird 3 conducted a second reconnaisance flight on Wednesday, during which it discovered two of the five bodies, the P300 was not in the area anymore.

The P300 is one of three vessels supplied to Libya by Italy under the 2017 Italy-Libya agreement. The pact is one of a series of cooperation agreements signed by Italy, the EU and Libya in early 2017 to help fund and train the Libyan coast guard and other authorities to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.

Civil society, non-government organizations and rights groups have long objected to cooperation with Libya, urging the EU to withdraw funding.

Five years into the deal, which was renewed in 2020 and again in 2022, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) wrote, "this help comes at the expense of migrants and refugees’ human rights, as virtually everyone intercepted at sea by the Libyan coast guard ends up in a Libyan detention center. The agreement … supports the system of exploitation, extortion and abuse in which so many migrants feel themselves trapped."

Rights groups have also filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court, alleging that officials in the EU and its member states, as well as members of the Libyan coast guard and others, were responsible for crimes against humanity against migrants and refugees.

In its bid to deter migrants, the EU has also signed several other controversial agreements with North African countries, including Tunisia.

Read AlsoLibya's coast guard has intercepted and returned nearly 21,000 migrants in 2024

Renewed calls for state-led rescue mission

In its press release and on social media, Sea-Watch also called on the European Union to launch a search and recovery operation with the goal of identifying the deceased and informing their families.

"Any hope for the five people we found is gone," Sea-Watch spokesperson Wagner said. "But we demand justice and safety for all those people who are still on their way to Europe -- and an EU policy that prevents more deaths."

Sea-Watch moreover reiterated calls for a Europe-wide, state-sponsored rescue program for the Mediterranean. Last week, Sea-Watch and other migrant rescue NGOs that operate in the Mediterranean called on the EU and its member states to re-establish an EU search and rescue program for the Mediterranean along the escape routes, which has not existed since the end of operation Mare Nostrum in 2014.

The private organizations also said that ships of civilian sea rescuers have been involved in the rescue of more than 175,000 people in the Central Mediterranean since 2015.

In Thursday's press release, Sea-Watch furthermore echoed the NGOs' criticism from last week about how, from their point of view, civilian sea rescue has been increasingly confronted with official obstructions, criminal prosecution and the confiscation of ships from 2017 at the latest.

Last week, the Sea-Eye 5, a German-flagged NGO rescue vessel, was barred from leaving the Sicilian port of Pozzallo after docking there with 65 rescued migrants on board on June 16.

Six deaths per day

At present, 21 organizations are reportedly involved in rescue missions in the Central Mediterranean, ten of them from Germany. This 'civil fleet', as it's often called, currently comprises 15 rescue vessels, seven sailboats and four reconnaissance planes. This week, however, the German government announced it will end its annual financial support of 2 million euros to organizations engaged in sea rescue operations.

Almost 22,000 migrants have died or gone missing since 2015 in the Central Mediterranean, according to the Missing Migrants Project. That's close to six deaths per day on average. The real number is almost certainly higher.

With 4,574 dead and missing migrants, 2016 was the deadliest year in the past decade, followed by 2023 (2,526). Attempts to cross the Mediterranean in often unseaworthy boats repeatedly lead to fatal disasters like the Cutro shipwreck off the southern Italian Calabria coast in 2023, in which at least 94 migrants lost their lives.

The rescue of migrants trying to reach Europe from the Middle East or Africa via the Mediterranean has been one of the most contentious issues in European politics for decades.

An earlier version of this article stated that the MRCC in Rome sent out a mayday relay. In fact, it was a so-called Inmarsat message of the highest urgency, which is equivalent to a mayday relay. The article also said that a Frontex plane flew "narrow search patterns", when in reality it only flew above the bodies.