InfoMigrants news website said the rescue ship “Alan Kurdi” of the German NGO, Sea-Eye, came under gunfire from gunmen on a Libyan-flagged boat.
Sea-Eye said it was appalled to see the European Union allowing this brutal behavior againt NGOs working I’m rescuing immigrants off Libya’s coast.
The German NGO said the firing incident took place when its vessel was rescuing 90 immigrants off Libya’s coast .
“We are in shock, we have never been threatened in this way,” Sea-Eye spokesman Gorden Isler told AFP, adding that they were able to get 90 people on board, including two women,” Isler said.
Isler said the masked men fired warning shots and pointed mounted guns at the rescue crew and the migrants, some of whom had jumped into the water, before retreating.
According to InfoMigrants, the NGO was en route to Italy’s Lampedusa island, so it wasn’t in Libyan territorial waters.
