Incident came after up to 60 people reported to have died last week in the Mediterranean after setting out from the Libyan coast
Crew on a Médecins Sans Frontières vessel observe a Libyan coastguard boat complicate efforts to reach two small boats full of people heading for Europe. Photograph: Simone Boccaccio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Imagescoastguard of hampering an attempt to save more than 170 people making the perilous journey across the sea to Europe.
In a video taken by crew on a support aircraft operated by the maritime rescue NGO Sea-Watch, a patrol vessel moves into position between two rigid dinghies operated by MSF, one of which has already started taking people on-board. The positioning makes it impossible for the second dinghy to move towards the vessel in distress.
Juan Matías Gil, the head of MSF’s search-and-rescue mission in Rome, said the Libyan coastguard had attempted to tow away one of the dinghies. “We were never going to allow this. We are running under the Norwegian flag so the boat is Norwegian territory in international water. We don’t know where we would have ended up if they had managed to board our boat,” he said.
The incident came after survivors said as many as 60 people had died last week in the Mediterranean after setting out from Zawiya on the Libyan coast. The 25 survivors said their dinghy’s engine had broken down after three days, leaving the group adrift for days before being rescued by another humanitarian group, SOS Méditerranée.
According to the latest data from Frontex, the EU border agency, 4,315 people made the crossing from north Africa to the EU across the Mediterranean in January and February, with an increase in numbers expected in the coming weeks.
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