At least five migrants died and seven were missing when the coast guard returned 49 others to Libya’s capital Tripoli on Wednesday as fighting there raged, the U.N. migration agency said.
A Maltese commercial vessel rescued the migrants from an inflatable boat and handed them to Libya’s coast guard, which brought them to a naval base in Tripoli where they were allowed to disembark after a delay of several hours, the International Organization for Migration said.
There has been uncertainty about whether migrants intercepted by Libya’s coast guard would be able to dock in Tripoli. Last week, a group of about 280 migrants were prevented from disembarking overnight because of shelling in the port city.
“We have no clarity as to the procedures that are followed or will be followed from now on,” the IOM’s Libya office said in an email quoted by Reuters.
🚨 Update: Update: 49 people finally disembarked in Tripoli. five bodies have been retrieved during this operation and migrants are reporting to IOM staff that seven others are missing. pic.twitter.com/m1EXKitZRa
The group that disembarked on Wednesday were of Eritrean and Sudanese nationality, and included eight women and three children. They were taken to one of several detention centers in Tripoli, IOM said.
Fighting around Tripoli has intensified in recent weeks between forces allied to Libya’s internationally recognized government and those fighting for eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar, who launched an offensive to capture the Libyan capital just over one year ago.
The NGO Alarm Phone was the first to announce the tragedy, saying Malta was “responsible for the deaths and for returning the survivors to war, rape and torture”. Sources said that the boat was the last of four that had been left floating in Malta’s search and rescue zone for days.
Both Malta and Italy last week declared their ports closed to migrant disembarkation, citing the COVID-19 outbreak as their primary concern.
But more than 250 healthcare professionals and students in healthcare, including more than 100 medical doctors, have signed an open letter calling for Malta’s Prime Minister to reconsider his stance.
While it acknowledges that the COVID-19 situation is serious, the letter points out that allowing people to die in the name of public health is contradictory.
In a comment accompanying his signature, Professor Albert Fenech said: “Life before politics… as for health, we are perfectly capable of testing and isolation.”
In the letter, the signatories say that they cannot abandon their moral and ethical responsibilities and call on the state to likewise not abandon its positive obligation to protect lives.
They acknowledge that rescue and disembarkation are not totally risk-free, and call for steps to be taken to mitigate the risks rather than violate the human rights of people in distress at sea: “If we allow the government to pay for public health with people’s lives, we will have failed in our obligations as citizens, as healthcare workers, and as a nation.”
