During the evening of May 23, between 5 to 6pm, more than one hundred refugees and migrants who had been kidnapped and held captive by human traffickers west of Bani Walid, Libya, managed to escape. They were shot at while attempting to flee, resulting in several casualties and 25 injured who were...
Dear European Governments, What migrants and refugees are living in Libya should shock the collective conscience of Europe’s citizens and elected leaders. Blinded by the single-minded goal of keeping people outside of Europe, European funding is helping to stop the boats from departing Libyan...
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for an end to the arbitrary detention of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in Libya. For more than a year, MSF has been providing medical care to people held inside Tripoli detention centres in conditions that are neither humane nor dignified. “...
Last Friday (11 August 2017), the Libyan authorities publically announced the establishment of a search and rescue (SAR) zone and restricted the access to humanitarian vessels into the international waters off the Libyan coasts. Immediately afterwards, the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination...
Interview with Jean-Guy Vataux, MSF Head of mission in Libya MSF is providing assistance to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya. Most of them have been robbed, taken under the control of criminal networks, abused, jailed, beaten up or tortured. Some have died. Since July 2016, MSF has...
During a rescue in the Mediterranean Sea on 23 May, the Libyan coastguard approached boats in distress, intimidated the passengers and then fired gunshots into the air, threatening people’s lives and creating mayhem, according to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS...
In order to increase Tunisian fishermen’s capacity to carry out rescues at sea, MSF has carried out a six-day training with 116 local fishermen in the town of Zarzis. MSF is also carrying out trainings for the Tunisian and Libyan Red Crescents, the Tunisian Civil Protection service and the Tunisian...
The latest tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea on 5 August, in which hundreds of people drowned after a boat carrying up around 600 people capsized, underscores the severe lack of adequate search and rescue operations in the area, says Doctors Without Borders/Médécins Sans Frontières. The wooden boat...
Tensions are rising in eastern Libya and, as a result, medical needs are increasing. Fighting in the region has now expanded beyond the city of Benghazi, which has been the scene of armed confrontations for more than a year, to Derna, the stronghold of the Islamic State (IS) in the area, where...
This weekend more than 6000 people were rescued in several operations on the Mediterranean Sea while making the treacherous crossing from Libya to Europe. Three hundred and sixty nine of those were rescued by the MY Phoenix a search and rescue vessel run in partnership by Médecins Sans Frontières/...
