ROME (Reuters) – A charity vessel has rescued more than 30 migrants including two children who had been stranded for four days on a gas platform in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia, the Sea-Watch organisation said on Tuesday.
“This morning, Sea-Watch’s fast ship Aurora left (the Italian island of) Lampedusa to rescue them. Now the people are safe, assisted by our crew,” it said in a statement.
A reconnaissance plane operated by Sea-Watch had spotted the group on the Miskar platform on Saturday, with an empty rubber dinghy floating nearby.
The charity added that the migrants had been left “exposed to the cold and without care for four days after the dinghy they were using to escape from Libya went adrift”.
Alarm Phone, a group that operates a help line for sea migrants, on Monday said on X that it had spoken to the migrants on Sunday and been informed that one person had died and others were sick.
European governments, keen to curb irregular immigration, have signed agreements with Tunisia and Libya that they will intercept and take back sea migrants, despite criticism from human rights groups.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini and Cristina Carlevaro, editing by Keith Weir)
