The Ocean Vikingthe SOS Méditerranée ambulance ship, rescued 196 peopleamong the 9 unaccompanied minors and a woman, yesterday Tuesday morning, during two operations outside Libyathe NGO announced.

“The majority of those rescued are nationals of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan,” said Mediterranean SOS, which is based in Marseille (southern France).

The rescues took place in two times, in the search and rescue area of ​​Libya. In the first phase, migrants who were on an “overloaded wooden boat”, 96 people, were rescued, and a little later those who were on a second overloaded boat, another 100 people, the organization clarified.

In the visual material released by the NGO through X, a boat can be seen carrying a large number of migrants, wearing orange life jackets.

Italian authorities indicated Ancona (east), “1,497 kilometers from the zone of operation” of search and rescue, as the “safe location for the disembarkation” of the rescued people, Mediterranean SOS said.

“This is, once again, an extremely remote port, which requires the teams and the rescued to travel for several days. This practice of designating remote ports empties the central Mediterranean of scarce resources vital to search and rescue operations, with departures more frequent in the summer and as we head past the 30,0000 missing in the Mediterranean since 2014.” civilized the NGO.

Mediterranean SOS estimates that it has rescued over 40,000 people in the Mediterranean since 2016, mostly in the central Mediterranean migratory seaway — the most dangerous on the planet.

In 2023, at least 3,155 migrants died or were reported missing trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the hope of finding a better life there, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is part of of the UN system.

Since January, 1,098 migrants and refugees have died or been declared missing, according to the same source.