ROME -- The German non-governmental organisation RESQSHIP has rescued 43 refugees, including four children, in the Mediterranean after the dinghy they were travelling on began to deflate. All people were safely evacuated and have been receiving medical treatment, the NGO confirmed.

 RESQSHIP responded to a message posted on X by non-profit organisation Sea Watch International on Monday at 5:20 p.m., which alerted authorities that a dinghy carrying 43 people was losing air and 12 people had been spotted swimming alongside the boat in the Mediterranean. The NGO Alarm Phone, a support hotline aiding refugee rescue operations, had initially raised the alert around 11 a.m. and later posted that authorities had not responded.

 Sea Watch International said that Italian, Maltese, and Tunisian authorities had been contacted but were refusing to help, passing the responsibility onto each other.

 “Italy argues that Tunisia is responsible, while Tunisian authorities simply ignore the distress situation,” the message read on X. “Now we see the reality: a boat is sinking before our eyes, and nobody is intervening.”

 RESQSHIP later sent out its ‘nadir’ vessel, a 19-metre-long sailing boat, to rescue the migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.

 “What a relief!” Alarm Phone posted at around 10:30 p.m. on Monday on X. “It was only thanks to the #civilfleet that another disaster in the Mediterranean was prevented!”

 The rescue operation comes as Alarm Phone has confirmed on Tuesday that 117 people were found in the Mediterranean by the Libyan coast guard. The boat, travelling from Lebanon to Crete, was in “severe distress”.

 “We condemn these border practices that violently prevent the freedom of movement for all,” the NGO wrote on X on Tuesday.

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