Baby born on rescue boat is now part of the crew
A Cameroonian asylum-seeker has given birth to a baby on a search and rescue vessel off the Libyan coast after she was pulled alive along with her husband from a sinking oil rig tug boat in the Mediterranean Sea.
Fayan Alex was born on the Aquarius, a former North Atlantic fisheries protection ship now used by humanitarian organisations SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
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"The 77m-boat has a Gibraltar flag so, as little Fayan Alex was born in international waters under this flag, he has a special birth certificate listing the Aquarius as his place of birth," MSF's spokeswoman Gemma Gillie told Mashable.
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"By sea law that makes him part of the crew under the flag of Gibraltar."
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory, so Fayan Alex is now a British citizen. He was given the name Alex after the captain of the boat.
His mother Bernadette Obiana went into labor shortly after being transferred into the Aquarius from the boat along with 250 others. MSF said it was the first time the woman received any medical care over the course of her pregnancy.
Bernadette Obiana and her husband Fayan Dibonde Destine spent three years in Algeria before moving on to Libya for a month. They took the boat late at night into the Mediterranean and were very scared once the boat encountered difficulties.
"That baby had a one in a million chance and he took it"
"Libya was very difficult, there is always the threat of being kidnapped and killed," she said. "I needed to hide, hide, hide all day."
"We want baby Alex to succeed in life," she said.
MSF's doctor Erna Rijnierse said: "It brought tears to my eyes, it is incredible if you think about the odds of this baby being born here.
"If it had been 24 hours earlier she would have been cramped into a dinghy with sea water and fuel leaking in – we also treated three women with severe fuel burns."
"And if she had gone into labor before getting on that boat in Libya, she would have not dared to go to a hospital. That baby had a one in a million chance and he took it," she added.
On Wednesday, the Italian navy rescued 500 people after their smugglers' boat capsized in the Mediterranean.
A series of photos released by the Italian navy showed the rickety boat tipping over "due to overcrowding and instability caused by the high number of people on board," the navy said in a statement.
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At least five people drowned in the incident.
Since February, the Aquarius has rescued more than 1,500 people.
The International Organization for Migration reported that more than 6,000 people have been rescued off Libya since Monday bringing the total to 11,000 since the start of May and 39,000 since the start of the year.
UPDATE: May 26, 2016, 4:48 p.m. BST
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