German migrant rescue charity Sea-Eye says one of its vessels rescued 65 migrants in overloaded rubber boat off Libya
- Blue dinghy lacked sufficient drinking water for the 64 men and one woman, and there was no satellite phone or navigation aid on board
German migrant rescue charity Sea-Eye said its vessel “Alan Kurdi” had rescued 65 people from an overloaded rubber boat on Friday in international waters off the Libyan coast.
The blue dinghy lacked sufficient drinking water for the 64 men and one woman, and there was no satellite phone or navigation aid on board, the group said in a statement.
“The people aboard this rubber dinghy were incredibly lucky,” said the NGO, stressing that their chance of being spotted with binoculars had been negligible.
“Without a GPS-enabled telephone or basic nautical knowledge, these young people would probably not have reached land and would have disappeared,” said Gorden Isler, operations director on the “Alan Kurdi”.
The group said that the inflatable boat, spotted 63 kilometres (40 miles) off the Libyan coast, had at first tried to escape, apparently fearing the charity ship belonged to the Libyan Coast Guard.