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Come and pick us up, we’re sinking

“Come and pick us up, we’re sinking”
The coast guard saves 226 migrants


The patrol boats intervened in Lybian waters after a message from a barge with a satellite phone and collected by Don Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in charge of the Habeshia Agency.
PALERMO  = 226 migrants of sub-Saharan origin (including 37 women and a child, two of them pregnant), aboard two different boats, were rescued and saved by the Italian coastguard in Libyan waters. To collect requests for help, received via satellite, on the evening of yesterday had been Fr. Moses Zerai, the Eritrean priest responsible for the Habeshia  Agency, and Sr. Grace of Bari.

The S.O.S. had arrived with a call from a satellite phone, from a boat load of refugees stranded off the coast of Libya. “Come and pick us, we’re going to sink …”. Fr. Moses Zerai, the Eritrean priest responsible for the Habeshia Agency dealing with migrants and asylum seekers, turned the alarm to authorities: “They told me they’re at sea from last Friday and that the sea conditions are worsening. We cannot assist helplessly to a new tragedy of the sea “.

The first S.O.S. that collected by Fr. Moses, arrived around 21: “come and pick us up, we’re going to sink”; It came from a ship with 111 people aboard, which would take the Sea last Friday and was found about 30 miles from Tripoli. An hour later, the second request for help, from a boat with 115 other migrants, about 60 miles from Tripoli. The port authorities have immediately hijacked tugboat area “Asso 30”. Tranfer shipment operations concluded
of all passengers, the Coast Guard patrol boats have taken over the route to Lampedusa.