The news was published the next day by many media outlets. At least 22 people had disappeared and a woman had died after a rubber raft capsized in the central Mediterranean on June 27. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) team, aboard the Geo Barents ship, managed to rescue 71 survivors, but could do nothing to revive the victim, a pregnant woman who ended up dying. Three other people required medical attention, including a four-month-old baby. What was not known then were the terrible images of the rescue or that it was a 17-year-old Togolese who became a new hero in the Mediterranean.
The rescue began, like so many other times, after the Alarm Phone organization warned of the danger to the barge. She was a long way from the Geo Barents, a three hour sail. When the humanitarian ship arrived, many of the migrants had already fallen into the water. “Our worst nightmare came true. When we got close to the inflatable boat and we could see it with the binoculars, we understood how complicated the rescue would be”, declared the coordinator of the search and rescue team, Riccardo Gatti.
Photojournalist Michael Bunel, present at that moment, remembers the arrival well, in statements to the Infomigrants portal: “It was truly catastrophic, because the ship was sunk, but the fear was that there were people scattered around. We started looking for people drifting. And right away we found three people on a wooden board. One of the men yelled that there was a baby.”
The story of the young Togolese, whose name has not been released, is cruder. According to La Stampa, they left the night before, around 11 p.m. From the beginning they realized that things were not going well. The engine made strange noises, and when the day came it began to make rough seas. The boy was sleeping. Then, around four in the afternoon, water began to enter the boat. "We tried to empty it," he said, but were unsuccessful. Then the panic precipitated the sinking and many ended up in the sea. Among them, this young man, one of the few who knew how to swim, so he began to try to rescue children. "I saved many, but one was already dead," he lamented. He was able to do it with the four-month-old girl, in the yellow T-shirt, and with her mother, who together were sent to a hospital in Malta by helicopter. He first found her mother, and then he saw the girl in the water, took her and entrusted her to a man who was near her and who placed her on her back. Afterwards he continued rescuing people. He saved dozens of people. “This young man is a hero!” Bunel assured in an interview. “When we took her out of the water she was no longer breathing. One of the lifeguards took the girl immediately to give her a cardiac massage, ”said the photojournalist. He finished well: "After a time, which seemed infinite to me, the baby began to cry in his arms."
Among the missing are some children, according to those who could be saved. Two women lost their children at sea, as did another young woman, who could not find her little brother. After four days of waiting, Italy assigned the port of Taranto for them to disembark. Before, three women and a man had to be evacuated due to serious burns due to fuel.
This Tuesday marked one year since the Geo Barents ship has been carrying out operations in this area of the central Mediterranean, a period in which the teams have rescued 3,138 people. Between 2017 and 2021, at least 8,500 people died or disappeared and 95,000 were forcibly returned to Libya. So far this year, 721 migrants have died in these waters.
According to data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, arrivals in the country have increased by around 30% compared to last year on the same dates. The Minister of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese, expects that travel will continue to grow due to the impact that the blockade of Ukrainian cereal exports will have in North Africa. "If the crisis continues and it is not possible to get the grain out of the Black Sea ports, we must expect greater migratory flows," she warned.
