THE civil migrant rescue fleet demanded that the EU resume its search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean today as about 40 refugees were feared to have drowned while attempting to flee Libya yesterday. 
 
A boat with over 100 migrants left the Libyan coast near the city of Al Khums late on Monday night. At 3.30am yesterday someone on board contacted Alarm Phone, a charity which provides independent support for people crossing the Mediterranean. 
 
“They were in severe distress, crying and shouting, telling us that people had died already.” The charity wrote on its Twitter feed.  
 
“We tried to get their GPS position but the people were in such panic that they could not retrieve it. As the boat was still very close to the Libyan coast, we had no other option but to inform authorities in Libya and Italy. We think nobody went out to look for them.”
 
The EU-funded Libyan coastguard told the charity it had found the shipwrecked and brought the survivors to safety. 
 
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirmed yesterday it was on the scene as the bodies came ashore. Among the victims of the shipwreck was a family: mother, father and child, MSF said. 
 
“For them it was too late. Our medics couldn’t do anything but help the authorities by providing body bags.
 
“While our MSF teams were at the disembarkation point in Al Khoms, they were informed that another rubber boat had left and was already spotted 60 miles far off Misrata.
 
“Lives are at risk every day that people continue to flee Libya by the sea. Proactive and sufficient European search and rescue capacity is urgently needed in the central Mediterranean.”
 
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency estimates that “some 900 people have lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean” this year.
 
UNCHR spokesman Charley Yaxley called for “renewed efforts to reduce the loss of life at sea, including a return of EU state search and rescue vessels. 
 
“Legal and logistical restrictions on NGO search and rescue operations, both at sea and in the air, should be lifted. Coastal states should facilitate, not impede, voluntary efforts to reduce deaths at sea.

“These measures should go hand in hand with increased evacuation and resettlement places from states to move refugees in Libya out of harm’s way.”

Meanwhile the Mare Juno, a rescue ship operated by the Italian NGO Mediterranea: Saving Humans rescued 100 people, including eight pregnant women, this morning. 

Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini initiated another humanitarian crisis today after closing all the country’s ports to the German NGO migrant rescue ship Eleonor, which has 100 survivors on board. 

Alarm Phone said “we will probably never find out how many lives were lost or what their names, stories, and dreams were. Many families and friends will never know for certain where their loved ones are.
 
“This mass dying has to stop. Death in the Mediterranean is not a natural disaster. It is the result of a violent border regime that closes safe routes; that criminalises flight, help and search and rescue; that closes harbours, that decides to let people drown when their distress is known.
 
“Some are responsible for these deaths: the European border machine, including Frontex and [Operation Sophia]; European governments and their allies, the so-called Libyan coastguards who abduct migrants at sea. You all are responsible for this misery in the Mediterranean.
 
“Who will investigate these crimes at sea? Who will follow up on our information that both European and Libyan authorities knew about this case but did not react quickly and adequately? Who will persecute those who speak in the name of humanity when militarising borders?
 
“We will not forget those who died yesterday, and all those who die daily at Europe’s borders. They will live on in every moment in which we do not give up on overcoming the border regime that killed them.”