NOS ARIES

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Tug involved in complex rescue operation

A complex migrant rescue operation was launched during the night of April 25, 2022, by the Coast Guard of Pozzallo, for the approximately 400 migrants aboard a fishing boat stopped off the coast of the Ragusa town. The fishing boat with 400 migrants on board was intercepted late in the evening when it was still about 20 miles from the port. The sea conditions were not good, and patrol boats of the Coast Guard and the Guardia di Finanza have been launchedfrom Pozzallo and Augusta. The 'Nos Aries' was also sent to the scene in order to embark all the migrants, but the rough sea did not allow this maneuver. The tug berthed in Pozzallo early on April 26 at the General Cargo Terminal. The migrants, in groups, were transhipped on the patrol boats that shuttled with Pozzallo. During the night there was also a medevac. Among the 400 there are women, children, numerous families. Most of them would came from Syria. Several boats had sailed from both Libya and Tunisia in recent days, but four boats were shipwrecked off the coast of Tunisia, in front of Sfax, since April 23. 14 people who lost their lives and whose bodies were recovered, another ten were missing; 98 migrants rescued by Tunisians themselves and brought back. News of another shipwreck came from Lebanon, where nine bodies have been recovered. A boat with 51 people on board was in danger of sinking 30 miles from Lampedusa in the Maltese SAR zone. All 51 were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and taken to Lampedusa where between April 23 and 25 other groups of migrants had arrived autonomously, for a total of about 1000 people. Many of whom were then transferred to the quarantine ship 'Aurelia'. On the island, the last 8 migrants arrived during the night while about 70 arrived in Roccella Jonica, in Calabria.