On board the Ocean Viking (AFP)
Food stocks available for the 356 people rescued aboard Ocean Viking, at sea for 19 days, are starting to run out, said Médecins Sans Frontières, which estimates it has "four days" of reserves, Friday including.
"We have four days of food stocks left today," an MSF spokeswoman on board said Friday morning. "After that we will have to tinker with what we have left of the previous missions".
The SOS Mediterranean and Médecins sans Frontières boat is waiting Friday for the twelfth day in international waters between Malta and Sicily since its last rescue operation, waiting to be allowed to disembark its passengers.
People rescued off Libyan waters arrived on board severely dehydrated after spending four days at sea aboard a rubber canoe without water, food or shade.
Among them are four women and five children from one to six years of age, as well as a hundred minors under the age of eighteen, 80% of whom travel alone, sometimes between 13 and 15 years old.
Most of these people, two-thirds of whom are from Sudan, have fled Libya to escape a wide range of ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and sometimes torture and have arrived in poor health and sometimes borderline malnutrition. according to the medical team.
MSF works to ensure at least one hot dish a day, as well as regular distributions of sweet tea, cereal bars and protein biscuits.
The teams are also forced to restrict access to water by limiting the showers to two per week and per person, three minutes each time.
In the same way the Ocean Viking, a 69-meter Norwegian-flagged ship, saves fuel and is practically standing still, allowing itself to drift during the day in the Sicilian Canal.
The boat, which left for Marseille on 4 August and is the first mission for SOS Méditerranée, was refused at the last moment on the way to refuel with water and fuel in Maltese waters. had asked.
© 2019 AFP