Libya’s EU-Backed Coast Guard Attacked a Migrant Rescue Ship
On Sunday, the migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking was attacked by armed men in international waters. The assailants: the Libyan Coast Guard, sponsored by the European Union to police the Mediterranean.
An SAR team rescues a boat carrying 130 migrants that departed from Libya on August 26, 2025, attempting to reach Europe. (Joan Galvez / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Ayla Emmink was resting in their cabin when the shooting started.
As deputy search-and-rescue coordinator (SARCO) on the rescue ship Ocean Viking, they had been awake for thirty-six hours.
The ship had taken eighty-seven people on board earlier that day (this past Sunday), rescued from two unseaworthy, overcrowded rubber boats in the central Mediterranean Sea. They included unaccompanied minors; most were refugees from Sudan, a country where three years of brutal civil war have claimed as many as 150,000 lives and displaced thirteen million.
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