Survivors rescued from a deflating rubber dinghy in the central Mediterranean Sea have reported that some 60 people who departed Libya with them more than a week ago perished during the journey, the humanitarian rescue group SOS Mediterranee said Thursday. The European charity's ship Ocean Viking spotted the dinghy with 25 people on board on Wednesday. The deflating rubber dinghy had left Libya more than a week before the rescue. Two on board the small, partially deflated dinghy were unconscious and were evacuated to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Humanitarian groups have warned that the far-right-led Italian government's policy of assigning ports further north keeps their rescue ships out of waters where they can be saving lives.
