During a spectacular nighttime operation, rescuers from the Geo Barents, MSF’s search and rescue ship, saved dozens of people from a capsized boat off the coast of the Maghreb.
During the weekend of March 16 to 17, 2014, the NGO Doctors Without Borders carried out three rescues.
During the second, MSF teams were threatened by the Libyan coast guard supported by the EU aboard the patrol boat LCG-302, offered by Italy.
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, the team from Geo Barents, the NGO’s rescue ship, found a fiberglass boat that was about to sink.
Members of the research vessel managed to distribute life jackets and take migrants aboard lifeboats, but forty-five people fell into the water when the boat overturned.
In these images, we can hear the desperate cries of the migrants interspersed with those of the rescuers (“one, two, three”), as they pull them out of the water.