In a single day, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Border,
or MSF) helped in saving some 3,000 people who tried to cross the
Mediterranean Sea in rubber and wooden boats to reach Europe in course
of a search and rescue operation, MSF said Tuesday in a statement.
"MSF search and rescue boat Dignity I contributed to the rescue of
around 3,000 people drifting in about 20 rubber dinghies and several
wooden boats in the central Mediterranean," MSF said.
The MSF Dignity I boat took 435 people on board, including 13
children under 5 years of age and 110 minors, in an operation carried
out on Monday, the statement revealed.
"This is one of the largest numbers of people we have assisted in any
single day since our search and rescue operations began over a year ago…
This unbelievable number speaks to the desperation people are facing in
their countries that pushes them to risk their lives to seek safety and
protection in Europe," Nicholas Papachrysostomou, a field coordinator
for the Dignity I, was cited as saying in the statement.
More than 3,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean
since the beginning of 2016, Papachrysostomou added, stressing that EU
response to the migration crisis was inefficient and failed to protect
migrants and refugees.
Thousands of people have embarked on the perilous voyage across the
Mediterranean since 2015 in a bid to escape war and poverty in North
Africa and the Middle East.
The majority of them cross the Mediterranean
Sea and arrive in the European Union. The EU border agency Frontex
detected over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in 2015.