59 Adrift Off Libya Saved By Call to Uk

An international rescue operation sparked by a satellite phone call to England from an inflatable vessel off the north African coast saved 59 people yesterday after they had been set adrift by people smugglers without food, water or power.

Alex Berhanu, an Ethiopian academic living in London, was called on a crackly line from the leaking inflatable at 11.35pm on Tuesday evening by his half brother, who told him passengers on the boat included seven children and four pregnant women.

Mr Berhanu, who has not seen his half brother for more than 20 years, tried to call back without success.

"My brother said 'Could you save us, save us, we are dying, two of us have already died'. They had not had food for three days. I could hear them screaming and crying, it was ear piercing. I have never heard anything like it. I couldn't get any more details."

The battery on the phone had run low. Mr Berhanu, 59, an economics lecturer at the North East London College, panicked and dialed the emergency services and various embassies. He then contacted coastguards in Falmouth, Cornwall, who were able to fix the position of the boat because the satellite phone had a global positioning system (GPS) on it.

Coastguards then coordinated the operation, sending a distress call to ships in the area and contacted the Italian and Maltese authorities as well as the British embassy in Tripoli.

A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: "We used that [GPS] to know where the craft was, and it was drifting. From Falmouth we have visibility around half the globe."

The group, who had set off for Europe from north Africa at the start of the week, had been ordered out of a store room on a commercial vessel and put into the inflatable craft. They had been informed they were in Italian waters when in fact they were floating helpless 64 nautical miles off the Libyan coast. They were also robbed of their possessions.

There were no American or UK military vessels within 150 miles that could help but a Tunisian supply boat in the area, the Ashtart, went to look for the inflatable without success.

The Italian authorities then sent an aircraft which spotted the inflatable boat and three others at about 6pm yesterday.

The MCA said all four boats had approximately 200 people on board although the other three, which last night were moving slowly around 100 miles off the coast of Malta, had not sent any distress calls.

Last night the 59 people had been towed by an Italian craft to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, a tiny island that is closer to Africa than Sicily. Mr Berhanu said his half brother may have said two of those on the vessel had died to hurry rescue operations into action.

Simon Rabett, rescue center coordination manager, said: "This is a truly awful episode of human trafficking. We recognise that both the Italian and Maltese authorities have more experience in dealing with this sort of situation in the Mediterranean seas than we do, and we are endeavoring to work with all authorities to try and bring some form of humanitarian assistance to these desperate people."