Thread: Migrant crisis: Irish navy rescues 109 off Libyan coast

Migrant crisis: Irish navy rescues 109 off Libyan coast

3 hours ago

From the section Europe

An Irish navy vessel rescued 109 migrants off Libya's coast on Sunday, following a request from the Italian Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre.

The LÉ William Butler Yeats took four hours to rescue the migrants off Tripoli, before providing food and medical treatment.

The rescued migrants were then transferred to the Italian Coast Guard.

It was the new vessel's first humanitarian search and rescue mission since being deployed on 14 July.

On the same day a government motion was passed in the Dáil (Irish parliament) to allow the Irish Defence Forces to join in on Operation

Sophia in response to the EU's ongoing migrant crisis.

The multilateral EU navy operation was set up in 2015, aimed at targeting vessels to stop gangs from human trafficking, mainly through Libya.

Opposition politicians criticised the move, saying the the change of status had implications for Irish neutrality.
Image copyrightIRISH DEFENCE FORCESImage captionOver 100 migrants were crowded onto the small inflatable boatIrish operations in the area, under Operation Pontus, have been based on a bilateral arrangement with the Italian government, saving almost 16,000 migrants in the southern Mediterranean during the last two years.

Sunday's rescue was part of this operation, but the LÉ William Butler Yeats's commander said the crew was "totally prepared" if it needed to switch to the new operation mid-mission.

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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was forced to defend the change in Irish strategy, after Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) criticised Ireland's participation in the operation it describes as "military focused".

"People from as far away as Afghanistan and southern Africa are travelling to Libya where there are human traffickers making an absolute fortune," Mr Varadkar was quoted as saying by The Irish Times.


"So I think it is the right thing that we should disrupt that human trafficking, and also rescue refugees and migrants where they need that help."

The EU's Operation Sophia began in June 2015, but doubt has been cast on how effective it has been in disrupting people-smuggling across the Mediterranean.

More than 94,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy so far this year, according to the UN. But more than 2,370 people have died trying.

Migrant crisis: Irish navy rescues 109 off Libyan coast

So now they are going to libya to pick up migrants and bring them to italy - can they do anything else to ENCOURAGE migration? The whole damn african continent will move to Europe. The poor and disadvantaged of Europe are tossed aside and citizens must pay for all these migrants livelihood for years to come. They got rid of Gaddafi to allow this scheme to become a reality. He was in the way of mass migration that has been decided by the UN and globalists to replace western culture.

And obama, hilary along with UN were strongly involved in carrying out the death of Gaddafi for this end game of mass migration - and they imported many, many "refugees" to US for the same replacement reason and spread of islam globally.