“Stranded Migrants on Mediterranean Rig Spark International Debate Over Fate”

Migrants stranded on the lower decks of a gas rig in the Mediterranean Sea have issued an urgent plea for help while authorities from multiple countries have hesitated to initiate a rescue mission. 

A man among them posted on social media, detailing their journey that commenced in Libya and ended in being stranded for five days on a rubber dinghy before reaching the rig in the Miskar oil and gas field, situated off the Tunisian coast last Saturday. 

On the rig’s lower decks lay a group of people, including women and children, visibly shivering as they sit or lie on metal grating positioned just above the turbulent waves mere feet beneath them. Tragically, one individual has already lost their life. 

‘You see here, on the floor. We are sick, we are hungry and cold. If you can come and help us, otherwise we will end up like the others,’ he said in Tigrinya, suggesting he had travelled from Eritrea or the Tigray region of Ethiopia. 

‘We don’t have a way out. We are sick and famished. We haven’t eaten for five days, we are dying from the cold.’

There are believed to be a total of 32 migrants trapped on the rig in the Miskar gas field according to the Med Alarm Phone, an activist-run group which takes distress calls from migrants in the Mediterranean, and Sea Watch, a refugee rescue organisation.

But four days on from their stranding, there is still no word of a rescue.

Under international law, the refugees have the right to be brought to safe harbour, but neither Libya or Tunisia are considered safe countries. 

Sea Watch and the NGO Saving Humans Mediterranea called on European authorities to intervene, reporting that Italian and Maltese authorities had been notified but that the Italian authorities passed the case back to Libya. 

Speaking to The Civil Fleet on Sunday, Sea Watch spokesman Paul Wagner said that workers on board the Miskar gas rig informed the NGO’s reconnaissance aircraft that the stranded migrants were still alive.

‘We demand that Italian and Maltese authorities rescue the people stuck on the platform. They are in international waters, in the Tunisian and the Maltese search-and-rescue (SAR) region – it is their right to be brought to a safe harbour,’ Wagner said.

He added that the Tunisian Navy had reportedly volunteered to collect the shipwrecked migrants, but that no vessel ever showed up.

‘Italian or Maltese authorities must rescue the people on the platform and bring them to a safe European harbour as soon as possible,’ he concluded.

Activists said that the operators of the Miskar gas rig, Amilcar Petroleum Operations (APO), would be complicit in violating human rights if they provided no aid to the trapped migrants on board their platform. 

APO is a joint venture between Tunisia’s state-owned oil and gas corporation and Shell. 

MailOnline has contacted APO for comment. 

Although the Miskar gas field is Tunisian-owned and operated, it sits in international waters and is a few dozen miles off the Italian coastal town of Lampedusa.  

News of the shipwreck comes as Tunisian authorities said 64 more migrants were rescued from a boat that capsized off the country’s eastern coast after running out of fuel.

The country’s national customs agency said maritime patrols sent to the capsized vessel rescued 64 people of various nationalities off the coast of Mahdia on Friday evening, one day before the migrants became stranded at the gas rig. 

No deaths were reported.

‘The rescued migrants were trying to illegally cross by boat towards the European space,’ the customs agency said.

Initial findings of the investigation suggest that the migrants had set off from an unnamed neighbouring country, likely to be Libya.

The migrants were taken to the port of Chebba, 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of Sfax, for further investigation.

More than 30,000 migrants set sail from Libya and arrived in Italy in 2024, according to UNHCR. 

The UN refugee agency said 61% of those arriving in Italy by sea came from Libya, followed by 32% from Tunisia.

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration estimates that more than 100 migrants have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia and Libya since the beginning of 2025. 

There is no official data about the actual number of migrants living in Libya.