Over just four days last week, 19-22 November, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 13 boats escaping from Libya, carrying about 730 people. Of those who called us, around 420 people were rescued to Europe, 287 by NGO vessels and 133 by the Maltese coastguards, and about 190 people were intercepted by the so-called Libyan coastguards and forced back to Libya. One boat with about 25 people returned independently to Libya. For one boat with 94 people on board, we cannot account – we do not know what happened to them. Apart from these 13 boats that reached out to the Alarm Phone, we know of several other boats that were intercepted by Libyan forces with hundreds of people on board and we know of approximately 182 people who arrived in Italy autonomously. We can thus assume that overall about 1,500 people were trying to flee from Libya over four days in November.
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Alarmphone: Four days of Struggle against Mass Push-Backs to Libya and Death at Sea