On 10 July, European rescue group SOS Mediterranee issued a statement condemning the Libyan coastguard for firing shots ‘in close proximity’ to their rescue operation, in which the crew had picked up 11 survivors of a shipwreck in international waters off the Libyan coast. The group explained that the ‘gunshots were fired less than 100 meters from the humanitarian rescue crew and the shipwrecked persons – including a woman and five unaccompanied children’. While no one was hit by the gunshots, ‘all [were] in shock and some sustained injuries because of the dangerous manoeuvres of the Coastguard’, according to the statement.
