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By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 4 October 2014:
One hundred and ninety six migrants attempting to cross Mediterranean were rescued . . .[restrict]by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) in one week with some 2,200 saved since the beginning of August. Many had set out from Libya.
Yesterday, on the first anniversary of the Lampedusa tragedy in which more than 350 migrants died after setting sail from Misrata, MOAS recovered 104 men from sub-Saharan Africa who were attempting to reach Europe in rubber dinghies.
The aid organisation said a number of the migrants were dehydrated and others were suffering from serious burns after their engine caught fire.
On Thusday, the rescue organisation saved 92 migrants, 57 men, 34 women and a two-year old girl after they were directed to their vessel, also a rubber dinghy, by the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre.
MOAS participated in a memorial ceremony in Lampedusa on Friday, laying a wreath on the Island which lies off the Italian coast and meeting with survivors of the tragedy and their relatives.
The operation, a privately-funded humanitarian initiative consisting of a 40-metre ship, has been running since the beginning to August.
As many as 90 more migrants may have drowned yesteray when another almost certainly unseaworthy and overcrowded boat capsized, only about three miles from the Libyan coast, off Garabulli.
Coastguards reported that they had rescued around 80 survivors who told them that many of their fellow passengers had drowned. One man said he thought that there had originally been about 180 people aboard when the craft set off.
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