Navy picks up further 647 migrants in Mediterranean

The Naval Service’s flagship LÉ Eithne had a record-breaking day yesterday when she picked up a further 647 refugees who were packed into two dangerously unsafe wooden barges.

This means that 3,376 migrants have been rescued by the ship since she began EU-coordinated search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean on May 28.

The crew are now working around the clock and have got little respite in the past 48 hours. The chances are they will remain extremely busy in the coming days as conditions in the Mediterranean Sea continue to remain good — a sign that migrant crossings may intensify.

The latest rescues occurred just hours after the flagship had transferred 593 migrants she rescued from dinghies on Sunday to the Royal Navy’s amphibious carrier HMS Bulwark.

The 92 women and five children were transferred to the British ship in LÉ Eithne’s RIBs (Rigid Inflatable Boats), while the HMS Bulwark used its own landing craft to ferry the 496 men onboard.

They were picked up in six separate rescue operations over several hours in an area approximately 100km north-west of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The crew worked throughout the night to clean up the vessel and have it operationally ready to join the search and rescue mission yesterday.

At 8am Irish time yesterday she was in roughly the same operational area off the Libyan coast when called upon to rescue 300 migrants crammed into an unseaworthy wooden barge.

Naval boarding parties in RIBs finished transferring them to LÉ Eithne by 10.30am. But within 30 minutes they encountered a similar barge, this time with 317 onboard.

The people were all transferred to the naval ship by 1pm. In total they rescued 544 men, 95 women and eight children during the two operations.

Sources say that prior to departing for the Mediterranean it was decided for health and safety reasons the vessel could only accommodate up to 400 migrants at a time.

However, the same sources indicated that its captain, Commander Pearse O’Donnell, was left with no choice but to take them all onboard yesterday as both barges could easily have sunk and there were no other vessels in the immediate area at the time.