[WATCH] 352 people saved in one rescue, four bodies recovered from rickety boat

Miriam Dalli is reporting from aboard the Topaz Responder

352 people were saved during the early hours of Tuesday morning by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station crew onboard the Topaz Responder.

The wooden boat carrying over 350 Eritrean migrants was spotted at around 3.30am when the boat was picked up by the vessel’s radar.

Travelling at 4 knots, search and rescue officers immediately realized that the boat was carrying migrants but could not intervene as the boat was still in Libyan waters.

It would later transpire that four men died in the hold of the rickety vessel. Packed like sardines in a tin, the migrants could not breathe properly: fumes, lack of air and exhaustion took their toll on the weakest of the group who left Libya on Monday at around 11pm from Zawija.

Amongst the survivors were 120 women – six of which were pregnant – and around 20 children under the age of five.

Constantly monitoring the vessel, the fast rescue daughter craft (FRDC) was then deployed and the rescue operation started at some 17nm off the Libyan coast.

A quick inspection of the vessel showed that several women and children were on board.

Lifejackets were handed out whilst rescue officers warned the migrants to remain calm. The sea was slightly rough and, jammed as it was and taking in water, the risk of the boat overturning was high.

Whilst the majority of the migrants were ferried to the mother ship, the wooden vessel was eventually brought closer to the Topaz Responder in a bid to hurry the transfer of the migrants. The assistance of the medical crew from the Emergency NGO was required as two men were in critical condition. The situation was critical as cardiopulmonary resuscitation was carried out on three passengers, one of whom had to be medically evacuated by the Italian navy and transferred to a hospital in Lampedusa by helicopter.

The piercing sound of men crying and women wailing echoed through the vessel as the bodies of the four deceased, wrapped in body bags, were transferred from the wooden boat onto the ship’s morgue, passing in front of the survivors.

At the same time that MOAS was engaged in its own rescue mission, other private missions out at sea were busy rescuing migrants spotted on cheap, rubber dinghies.

Unless Topaz Responder’s assistance is required in the area of operation and forced to turn back, the ship will continue on its way to Sicily to disembark the migrants and handed over to the Italian authorities.