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Sea-Watch ship Aurora detained on fabricated grounds

After a ~37-hour rescue operation, assisting the civil rescue organization Open Arms and rescuing 72 people from distress at sea, the Sea-Watch ship Aurora was detained on Monday afternoon by Italian authorities. Sea-Watch denounces the fabrication of reasons for the detention of the ship. Although the situation on board after the rescue deteriorated by the…

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Airborne Monthly Factsheet March 2023

Download Factsheet [PDF] This factsheet presents a summary of the distress cases witnessed in March 2023 by Sea-Watch’s Airborne Operations with the aircraft Seabird 2.1 In March 2023, we conducted 12 operations over a total flight time of 77 hours and 14 minutes. We spotted 62 boats, carrying over 2.091 persons2 in distress at sea.…

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Airborne Annual Report 2022

In 2022, 105,131 people arrived to Italy by sea, mainly from Tunisia and Libya. In Malta, however, the arrivals were only 444 people. In order to fully put these arrival figures into perspective, the mortality figures as well as numbers of illegal returns (pullbacks) committed by the Tunisian and the so-called Libyan Coast Guard in…

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Italian penalties against Sea-Eye are state injustice!

Joint Statement by Sea Watch and Alarm Phone On 14 June 2023, over 600 men, women and children who had fled Libya have drowned near the Greek island of Pylos in one of the largest shipwrecks in recent years. A few weeks earlier, on 23 May 2023, 500 people who had already made it to…

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Sea-Watch ship Aurora detained after rescue

After rescuing 39 people from distress at sea last Monday, the Sea-Watch rescue ship Aurora was detained by Italian authorities in Lampedusa yesterday evening, June 14, 2023. Also yesterday, southwest of Greece, at least 79 people on the move drowned in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, with hundreds missing. On Monday, June 12, the Aurora crew brought 39…

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Airborne Monthly Factsheet January and February 2023

This factsheet presents a summary of the distress cases witnessed in January and February 2023 by Sea-Watch’s Airborne Operations with the aircraft Seabird 2 (1). In January and February 2023, we conducted 8 operations over a total flight time of 56 hours and 41 minutes. We spotted 9 boats, carrying around 517 (2) persons in distress at sea. Download…

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“These heinous acts are committed in the name of us Europeans!”

Jakob is Tactical Coordinator for our air reconnaissance mission Airborne. We spoke to him about the current situation in the Mediterranean and a particularly violent incident on March 25th. You spent the last few weeks on Lampedusa. From there, you left almost daily by plane to the area of operation. What is the situation like…

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