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Men on 'Libyan coastguard boat' attack migrant dinghy 'Libyan coastguard' speedboat attacked migrant dinghy – NGO
(35 minutes later)
Armed men aboard a vessel with Libyan coastguard insignia have attacked an overcrowded dinghy carrying migrants and refugees off Libya, leaving at least four dead and up to 25 missing, a German NGO has said. The crew of a speedboat labelled “Libyan coastguard” attacked a migrant boat carrying about 150 people, beating them with sticks and causing many to fall into the water and at least four to drown, a humanitarian group has said.
Seawatch said one of its rescue ships and a diverted oil tanker were helping a dinghy in distress in international waters, 14 nautical miles off Libya, when assailants arrived on a vessel labelled as belonging to Libya’s coastguard and tried to steal the dinghy’s motor. The Germany-based Sea-Watch group, which is one of several non-governmental organisations operating vessels off the coast of Libya, said the speedboat swooped in just as the NGO’s personnel were about to go to the aid of the overcrowded rubber boat.
The men, who spoke only Arabic, beat some of the migrants with clubs, causing a panic that caused most of them to fall into the sea, a Seawatch spokesman said. It is not known whether the attackers were from the Libyan coastguard. “The violent intervention of the Libyan coastguard caused a situation of mass panic on board the rubber boat in distress,” Sea-Watch said in a statement. “One tube of the rubber boat collapsed, causing the majority of the 150 people to slip into the water.”
Seawatch said it had rescued 120 of the estimated 150 people onboard. The team recovered four bodies but saw other corpses in the water that could not be retrieved. The group estimate that between 15 and 25 are missing. The Sea-Watch crew recovered four bodies, spokesman Ruben Neugebauer told Reuters, and was still conducting rescues.
The Italian coastguard confirmed that the SeaWatch2 rescued 120 people before dawn on Friday but gave no further details. About 120 others were brought safely on to the Sea-Watch 2 ship, while four were unconscious and receiving treatment. Italy’s coastguard said there were nine rescue operations under way on Friday, and that Sea-Watch was involved.
According to the UN, at least 3,654 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean this year. A spokesman for Libya’s naval forces in Tripoli said he had not heard about the incident. Italy’s coastguard and a spokesman for the EU’s anti-smuggling Operation Sophia also said they had no information about the attack.
Attempts at the dangerous crossing are continuing despite worsening weather as winter approaches, with more than 2,400 migrants rescued off Libya in total since Sunday. Italy has taken in more than 146,000 boat migrants so far this year and is on track to see more arrivals than last year, when 153,000 arrived. Since Sunday, some 2,200 have been rescued.
The Italian interior ministry said on Tuesday that more than 145,000 migrants had landed in Italy this year, a figure similar to that of the previous two years. It was not immediately clear if Libyan coastguard members were responsible for the attack, nor whether the incident would affect the planned start of training next week of up to 100 Libyan coastguard members as part of Operation Sophia. The spokesman for Sophia had no immediate comment.
The US military, which also operates ships in the region, had no immediate comment on the incident.
“Next week training starts with the Libyan coastguard,” Sea-Watch’s Neugebauer said. “We think it’s quite important to think about with whom we are collaborating.”
According to information the German government has provided to parliament, the first tranche of training is to take place on two ships – one Italian and one Dutch off the coast of Libya, with equipment and trainers provided by Germany, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Britain.
The Libyan coastguard currently has three boats in Tripoli, three boats in Misrata and two boats in Zuwarah, according to the German government report. The German military said it had no information about the incident.
In August, another humanitarian group that operates rescue ships off the coast of Libya, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said it had been attacked and boarded by armed men on a Libyan navy boat. The Libyan navy said it fired “warning shots” because it thought the vessel was involved in people smuggling.