The humanitarian vessel Ocean Viking pulled to safety 39 migrants from a rickety wooden boat in the early hours of Friday morning. Almost half of the migrants are unaccompanied minors, the crew said.
The Ocean Viking ship, jointly run by SOS Mediterranean and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), in its first rescue mission in 2020 picked up 39 people traveling on a wooden boat which had begun taking in water around 35 nautical miles off the Libyan coast. The rescue took place in total darkness in the early hours of Friday and was further complicated by rough seas and strong winds, MSF wrote on Twitter.
In the first two weeks of 2020, at least 953 migrants, including 85 children, trying to flee Libya by boat were intercepted and returned to Libyan shores, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Tuesday. NGO search and rescue boats reported having rescued 237 others, the IOM said.
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