A second IOM-chartered boat carrying several hundred tons of
humanitarian aid is to leave for the besieged Libyan port city of
Misrata today, 16 April. The boat will carry out another vital
operation to rescue stranded migrants camping out around the port
and in a desperate state.

Among those on the boat are women, children and the elderly. The
migrants are all very weak and dehydrated with many needing medical
attention being provided by medical non-government organizations
(NGOs) on board the ship which have set up a small hospital on
deck.

The operation, funded by the European Commission's Humanitarian
Aid and Civil Protection Office (ECHO), aims to rescue as many
migrants as possible from the more than 7,000 migrants still
waiting for help at the port.

Nearly 1,200 migrants of various nationalities were rescued by
IOM on Friday, including women, children and the elderly. The
migrants were very weak and dehydrated with many needing medical
attention on the journey to Benghazi. Some had to be stretchered
off the boat when it docked on Friday night.

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IOM staff on the boat say that some of the migrants would not
have survived another day due to dehydration and weakness.

"Every day matters," says Jeremy Haslam, IOM operations leader
on the boat. "We need to get back to Misrata as fast as we
can."

The rescued migrants were among the 8,300 migrants identified by
IOM who have been camping out around the port of Misrata without
adequate shelter, clean water or food and no medical care.

Many of the migrants have been awaiting rescue from Misrata at
the port since the early days of the Libyan crisis and their
condition is particularly worrying.

Their plight has been of major concern to IOM which had been
trying to evacuate them for several weeks, hampered by lack of
funds and security issues.

As on the first operation, the IOM-chartered Ionian Spirit
leaving later Saturday, is carrying another load of humanitarian
assistance.

Among the more than 400 tons of aid are medical, food and
non-food supplies as well as a few ambulances donated by the U.A.E
Red Crescent Society. The rest of the assistance has been donated
for Misrata by Qatar, Libyan civil society organizations and the
International Medical Corps (IMC).

Meanwhile, about 800 of the nearly 1,200 migrants who were
helped on Friday and who had stayed overnight at a Libyan Red
Crescent camp in Benghazi, are today being taken by IOM by road to
Salum on the Egyptian border with Libya.

The remaining migrants fit enough to make the road journey to
Egypt will be assisted by IOM on Sunday.

IOM staff report that as the migrants were boarding the buses to
the border, several hundred Chadians, mostly women and small
children, arrived at the camp with their belongings, requiring help
to leave Libya and return home. The group had been living in the
Benghazi area.

For further information, please contact:

Jemini Pandya

IOM Geneva

Tel: +41 22 717 9486

       +41 79 217 3374

E-mail: "mailto:jpandya@iom.int">jpandya@iom.int