The NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has reported that the rescue ship Geo Barents rescued 440 migrants, including eight women and 30 minors, who were in international waters off Malta in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The organization has explained that the rescue vessel was on its way to take shelter from bad weather conditions, when it received a distress alert.
MSF has pointed out that the rescue work lasted more than ten hours, due to the sea situation, as the weather conditions did not allow the team to carry out the rescue when they reached the location of the boat where the migrants were.
»Unfortunately, the weather conditions did not allow our team to directly carry out the rescue, which could have endangered the lives of the people and those of the MSF team,» reads a statement from the NGO posted on its Twitter profile.
Thus, they have explained that when assessing the feasibility of rescue, they distributed life jackets and, hours later managed to rescue all the migrants, who are already on board the Geo Barents.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
