Due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, UN refugee agency UNHCR has closed two of its facilities in the Libyan capital Tripoli until Tuesday, March 24. Hotlines for asylum seekers and refugees are still available, says UNHCR.
The organisation Mediterranea Saving Humans has announced the suspension of its migrant rescue operations at sea due to the coronavirus emergency.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has reported that more than a dozen recent shipwrecks off the coast of Libya and elsewhere have pushed the death toll in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014 to over 20,000.
The NGO rescue ship Ocean Viking took on board 274 migrants in three rescue operations off the coast of Libya on Tuesday and Wednesday. Among them are reportedly 22 women and 64 minors.
The rescue ship Ocean Viking run by SOS Mediterranee and MSF rescued 84 people on Tuesday about 71 nautical miles off the coast of Libya, the organizations reported on Twitter.
Spanish rescuers picked up a total of 87 migrants in three different boats last week, including a baby who had been born in one of the boats just before the rescue.
A boat with at least 91 migrants on board floating in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast is feared missing. A hotline for migrants in distress at sea says Libyan authorities on Sunday refused to attempt to rescue the migrants because detention camps are "full". 93 other migrants were rescued from the Mediterranean on Sunday by a Spanish NGO.
Ninety migrants were picked up by British authorities as part of a large search and rescue operation, according to UK media reports. Most of them were rescued from rubber boats in the waters between France and England.
The teams from two private rescue ships, the Alan Kurdi and the Ocean Viking, made several rescues over the weekend in the Mediterranean. In total, the two ships say they have 484 people on board. They are now hoping to find a safe harbor.
On Thursday night, the Ocean Viking rescued 92 migrants, including pregnant women and children off the Libyan coast. Those rescued were "extremely weak and soaked in petrol" said the rescue team.
The Italian Court of Cassation has rejected an appeal filed by the prosecutor's office against an order to release Carola Rackete, the captain of the Sea-Watch 3 migrant rescue vessel. In June 2019, Rackete was temporarily arrested after she illegally entered the Italian port of Lampedusa with 40 migrants on board.
Italian authorities have assigned NGO rescue vessels Sea-Watch 3 and the Open Arms with almost 240 rescued migrants on board the ports of Taranto and Messina, respectively. Four EU countries agreed to receive the migrants, yet a binding quota system for the distribution of migrants rescued at sea is still not in place.