Life Support | 68 People Disembark in Ortona

On Thursday 30 April, EMERGENCY's search and rescue ship Life Support completed the disembarkation of 68 people at the Italian port of Ortona. Life Support conducted the rescues during two separate operations last Sunday in international waters within the Libyan SAR zone.

The two rubber dinghies in distress that were rescued were travelling separately and were both unsuitable for crossing the Mediterranean, as well as being overcrowded and lacking safety equipment. Once the two operations were complete, the authorities assigned Life Support to disembark at the port of Ortona, some 745 nautical miles away. This decision delayed the arrival of the rescued people at a safe place, and their access to essential services.

"During our days at sea, we had the chance to get to know the people we rescued, to hear their stories, and to care for them following tragedies that have been unfolding for years," says Crescenzo Caiazza, Medical Team Leader on board Life Support. They have a migration journey behind them that has left its mark on their bodies, with scars both visible and hidden, the consequences of torture suffered in Libyan detention centres, beatings, or the days they were left in the desert without food, water or shelter - an ordeal not everyone managed to survive. On board we have had some particularly delicate cases; I am thinking of a pregnant woman and small children, to whom we provided medical care. Now we hope that Italy and Europe will be able to welcome these people and offer them a future."

Most of the rescued people's countries of origin are Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan - places affected by extreme poverty, the climate crisis and war.

Sudan has now entered its fourth year of a bloody war and remains at the centre of the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world: even where fighting has ceased, the consequences continue to affect more than two-thirds of the population, who are in need of humanitarian aid. EMERGENCY itself bears witness to the severity of this crisis: we have never left the country and continue our work in Khartoum, Port Sudan and Nyala, observing a continuous deterioration in the condition of patients admitted to our facilities.

A young man from Sudan shared his experience with EMERGENCY staff: "I left my country because of the civil war and initially fled to Egypt, where I was mistreated and imprisoned. As soon as I had the chance, I returned to Sudan and from there I tried to reach Libya. I wanted to work, but the situation in Libya was terrible: there is a lot of racism; if you're a migrant, they don't pay you, they mistreat you, they can arrest you in the street or even come to your home to imprison you, then they take everything from you and demand a ransom to release you. I was arrested too, and the conditions in prison were really harsh: they left us without food for days on end. As soon as they let me go, I decided to attempt the crossing of the Mediterranean."

"They gathered all the people who had decided to make that desperate attempt in a small house hidden on the coast; when it was time to leave, they brought us a rubber dinghy that we had to inflate ourselves," continues the Sudanese man. "We set off in the dark; the dinghy soon filled with water and it was cold. When we saw you, we feared you were Libyans; we only realised you weren't when we saw there were women on board too. At that point, we knew we were safe."

With this disembarkation, Life Support has concluded its 43rd mission in the central Mediterranean. EMERGENCY's SAR vessel has been operating in this region since December 2022 and has rescued a total of 3,510 people during this period.