SURVIVORS of a shipwreck off the cost of Libya have told refugee rights activists that armed men shot at their boat, causing the tragedy in which 45 people died on August 17.  

A rubber boat carrying 82 people left from the Libyan city of Zwara on August 15. Later that evening they contacted Alarm Phone, an activist network that runs a distress hotline for refugees.

Alarm Phone alerted the Libyan coastguard as well as the Maltese, Italian and Tunisian authorities and provided them with the boat’s GPS position. None of them launched a rescue.  

In their last contact with the boat later that night, Alarm Phone said that the person they spoke to was “panicking and screaming, saying that people were about to die and that they needed immediate help.”

Last week the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) confirmed that the boat had sunk on August 17 and that a local fisherman had managed to save the lives of around 37 people.

In a report released late on Sunday night, Alarm Phone said that it has pieced together what happened after some of the survivors contacted them from Libya.

The boat had drifted westward for a day before they came across a Tunisian boat whose crew fixed their engine and helped them head back to Libya.  

An hour later they came across a boat with five armed men onboard.

“They asked us if we had a [mobile-satellite] phone,” Alarm Phone quotes the survivors as having said to them.

“The deal was they get the phone, and they take us back to shore. We agreed. We just wanted to get back to shore.

“They gave us a rope, we held on to it, and they headed to shore for four or five hours.

“Then they stopped and told us to give them the GPS device. We did that. Then they asked for our phones, which we handed out.

“We really just wanted to go ashore, as we had nothing to eat or drink. They told us: ‘You have dollars too, you have to give us the money too.’

“We were near the shore, so they turned around and went in the opposite direction. They kept telling us: ‘If you don’t give us the money, you will die.’

“We told them to stop. So they took the rope and shot the boat. People drowned, there was fire everywhere, some died. Some couldn’t swim.

“Thanks to the fisherman who saved us, we are still alive. We were saved and put in jail. Some have been released, others will probably be released today or tomorrow.

“… Libya is not a country to live in. We have to leave. It is unbearable what we are experiencing here. You have to do something. Urgently!

“The Europeans make it easy for themselves, they let people drown and take them to Libya, because it is easy for them. We can do nothing here, we have no prospects. You work for a month and then someone comes and takes your money.

“Unfortunately, that’s the way it is. It’s not a country. We’re afraid we can’t go out in the streets. We thank you very much and hope that we all stay healthy.”

Fourteen boats carrying close to 900 people contacted Alarm Phone between August 13 to 24, the activists say.

“Around 100 of them have been returned to Libya, about 540 people reached Europe. More than 100 people died or went missing, whilst the fate of a further 160 people remains unknown.

“After days spent collecting testimonies from survivors, speaking to relatives of the missing people and cross-checking all the information we had gathered about boats in distress, we can now confirm that at least four shipwrecks took place in the central Mediterranean between 17 and 20 August.”

Meanwhile, the NGO refugee rescue ship Sea Watch 4 has saved the lives of more than 200 people.

The ship, operated jointly by German charity Sea Watch and international medical organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF), picked up 104 people in two operations within 24 hours at the weekend. Earlier on Monday morning, the crew saved more than 100 others.

The Sea Watch 4 only arrived into the central Mediterranean on Saturday morning. Spanish charity Open Arms’s boat, the Astral, is also on its way to the region.

They will be the only dedicated rescue ships in the area as hundreds of people continue to flee Libya.