The actions of a teenager from Togo have been praised after video footage was released of him supporting a baby he saved from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea last week, in which at least 30 people were killed.
The 17-year-old, whose identity has not been disclosed, swam to save the child, whom he was holding above water when a rescue team arrived, in footage released by the French media group Brut.
The teenager said I am a good swimmer and I went to help people, according to M decins Sans Fronti res MSF whose rescue ship arrived at the site of the shipwreck.
Michael Bunel, a French photojournalist who was on board the rescue ship, told Brut that when they arrived they could hear the teenager shouting: There's a baby. There is a baby. The crew threw the teenager a flotation device to pull him and another survivor into the hospital, and gave urgent treatment to the four-month-old baby, who at first was not breathing. According to MSF, the baby and her mother were evacuated to Malta.
Safa Mselhi, a UN spokesman for the International Organization for Migration said that the rubber dinghy was only detected after nine days at sea. A pregnant woman who could not be resuscitated died on board the rescue ship.
71 people were saved by the Geo Barents from the shipwreck, some of them with fuel burns, caused by skin coming into contact with petrol that has mixed with seawater.
The survivors on the Geo Barents had to wait almost five days to get to land, only being allowed to disembark in the Italian town of Taranto on Saturday. The body of the pregnant woman was found on board the ship during this time.
Juan Matas Gil, MSF's search and rescue representative, said that this traumatic event is a deadly consequence of the growing inaction and disengagement of European and other border states, including Italy and Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Tragedies at sea continue to cost thousands of lives, and these people are lost on Europe's doorstep with absolute silence and indifference from EU states. Sea rescue charities have accused the European Union of failing to save refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean by requesting Libya's so-called coastguard intercept any boats attempting to cross the Mediterranean, despite allegations of abuse in Libya's militia-run detention centres.
At least 8,500 people died or went missing, and 95,000 were returned to Libya, in attempting to cross the Mediterranean between 2017 and 2021, according to MSF.
On Wednesday morning, 306 people were disbarked from SOS M diterrane's rescue ship Ocean Viking in Sicily. Some of the survivors had been on board for 12 days. The most recent rescue of 15 people who had been adrift for two days was carried out on Monday by the ship, which carried out eight rescues in less than two weeks.