London: Naval vessels from across Europe have converged in the Mediterranean north of Libya to rescue 3,000 people crammed on five open boats, in one of the largest mass migration attempts of the year.
HMS Bulwark was sailing to join ships already on the scene from Italy, Germany and Ireland, along with the volunteer boat of the private charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS). They were called out to aid the boats in trouble on Saturday morning.
They were met by extraordinary scenes in which the five small migrant vessels were overflowing with people, mainly from Eritrea according to first reports.
In one vessel, 250 people were crammed into a tiny wooden hold, with a similar number or more flooding the top decks.
There were fears that up to nine other boats were also out in the open sea, according to surveillance data, which prompted the emergency rescue.
They are believed to have set out from the coast of western Libya after a lull in the fighting there between the coalition of militias running the western half of the country and terrorists from Daesh, which has set up a branch there.
The rescues will bring to around 80,000 the number of migrants who have been picked up at sea by European rescue boats or who have otherwise made it across the Mediterranean in 2015.
The commanding officer of HMS Bulwark said he believed there were half a million more people waiting to cross the Mediterranean in what is the peak summer season.
The migrants set out largely from Libya, where there is virtually no effective control over the human trafficking trade because of the breakdown in law and order as the country falls into the hands of competing militias.
Most of those crossing are from sub-Saharan Africa along with Ethiopia and Eritrea.
From Italy and Greece, migrants set out across Europe, using routes that are well-known even back in their countries of origin.
One ends up in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden, known to have generous asylum policies. That is a particularly sought-after destination for those fleeing persecution in places like Eritrea.
Others seek jobs in northern Europe, including in Britain, joining the trail of economic migrants who end up being smuggled across the Channel or North Sea.
If the remaining nine boats from the current rescue effort are found and similar numbers are on board, yesterday’s rescue mission could end up as the biggest ever.
It is certainly the second weekend of major movement — last weekend alone, 5,000 people were picked up from 25 boats.
Seventeen dead bodies were found on one of the dinghies — migrants who had died of exhaustion, thirst, exposure, or a mixture of all three.
At the beginning of May, 6,500 people were picked up in two days.
Watching HMS Bulwark at work was Michael Fallon, the UK defence secretary, who had flown in on one of its three Merlin helicopters.
The migration crisis has turned into a major row within the European Union, which at the beginning of the year began an attempt to discourage attempts to cross the Mediterranean by scaling back the rescue operation.
Italy and Greece complained that they were having to bear an unfair weight of the costs of hosting migrants because of their geographical proximity to Libya and Turkey, along with Egypt, the third country from which boats are setting out.
After around 800 migrants died in a single sinking of a migrant boat in April, that policy was dramatically reversed.
Now the EU is split over proposals to install a quota system, which would see up to 20,000 migrants relocated, with Theresa May, the UK home secretary, saying it would create an additional “pull” factor.
Fallon said that, whatever was decided, the rescue operation had to be handled properly.
“In the short-term, we need more ships from other European navies to come and help here,” he said on board HMS Bulwark.
“We need to pool more intelligence, we need to find out who is doing this trafficking, how they are making money from it, and we need to go back and smash the gangs involved.”
That will raise once again the question of military intervention in Libya. The EU is also discussing the idea of using “boots on the ground” to sink the smuggling boats and tackle the local people involved in the trade before they set off, but that has been fiercely opposed by the authorities, such as they are, in Libya, and would risk further involvement in the civil war.
There has been a trade for years — or even centuries, dating back to the times of slavery — in people across the Sahara Desert, with the traditional end-point the town of Zuwara on the coast between the capital Tripoli and the Tunisian border.
The town is run by ethnic Berbers who also control key towns in the Sahara. The trade was repressed by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi after he agreed to reform Libya in the so-called “deal in the desert” to repair relations with the West, but he opened the flood-gates again as European countries including Britain, France and Italy backed the uprising against his rule.
Since he fell, the trade has flourished and spread to other towns, particularly as the country fell into factional fighting and then civil war.
Some of the boats in the latest rescue are thought to have set sail from near Sabratha, the next major town along the coast from Zuwara. Sabratha is now a stronghold of Daesh, which has extended its territory in recent weeks.
The links between Daesh and the towns on the coast have raised fears that terrorists will use the wave of migrants as cover to infiltrate fighters into Europe. The authorities in Italy have already arrested one Moroccan man, Majid Touil, who they said took part in the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis in which 21 tourists were killed and who is also said to have arrived by boat.
Since arriving off Libya in early May, HMS Bulwark has rescued 1,760 migrants — including pregnant women and unaccompanied children — from leaking boats. They have all been transferred to Italy.
Its helicopters have guided naval vessels from Italy, Ireland, Germany and Sweden to another 4,000.
Fallon said: “You have seen today 3,000 people trying to cross in a single day. We could see hundreds of thousands trying to cross this summer.”
He said the EU had to tackle the root causes of the trade.
“We have to tackle those causes much further back, getting after the trafficking, smashing the gangs and doing this and doing more to help those countries raise their standard of living and discouraging people from setting off on this very dangerous journey.
“This has to be a comprehensive approach for all EU countries. You’ve seen here German, Italian and British ships working together but every EU country has an interest in helping to deal with this problem much further back, otherwise potentially we will see thousands continuing to try to cross every day and the loss of life that comes with that.”
He added: “We can pool intelligence, get after the gangs themselves, we can try to cut off their financing, there is a lot of money involved in this operation, people are making money out of misery and we can do more there to track down the money.”
