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Wait, wait. Why is that fishing trawler towing an empty wooden boat at high seas???
Frontex experts who spotted it from the air had a good idea. And sure enough, after a few hours a steady stream of people emerged from below the deck of the fishing trawler and got onto the smaller boat.
When 80 people squeezed onto it, the fishing trawler quickly pulled away. The migrant ship then started to slowly head toward the Italian island of Lampedusa.
This was clearly the case of a “mother boat” used by criminals to carry a large group of migrants across the sea towards their destination before unloading them onto a smaller boat.
A Frontex plane and drone kept observing the fishing trawler and the boat with migrants over several hours, alerting Italian and Maltese authorities, as well as @EUNAVFORMED_OHQ .
The Italian National Coordination Centre initiated a complex operation and dispatched @GDF and @guardiacostiera . They caught up with the bigger vessel and arrested the suspected people smugglers. The migrant boat was intercepted in the Italian waters
Notice how few of the people that squeezed into the crowded wooden boat had life vests as they were left all alone in the middle of the sea.
Most of the migrants left at sea by the "mother boat" spotted by Frontex were from Bangladesh, Libya and Morocco.
UPDATE: Italian authorities seized the "mother boat" and arrested seven suspected smugglers
Over the last few days, this thread has gathered a large number of comments. We cannot respond to each individually, but we do want to clarify a couple of things
Frontex worked closely with the Italian authorities to make sure that all of the migrants were safe even though they received hardly any supplies from the people smugglers. The operation at sea was conducted by @GDF and @guardiacostiera
We shared a video from one of our planes to show how Frontex helps monitor Europe's borders. This was a good opportunity to illustrate an example of a “mother boat” used by people smugglers. We often share footage from our operations. Follow us to see more
