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MORE THAN A thousand migrants arrived in Italy within a few hours while hundreds of others, rescued by humanitarian vessels, were waiting for a port to receive them, NGOs and authorities said today.
The influx – while not unusual for the summer months – this year comes as Italy gears up for early elections which could bring the hard right to power.
Between 1 January and 22 July, 34,000 people arrived in Italy by sea compared with 25,500 during the same period in 2021 and 10,900 in 2020, Italy’s interior ministry said.
More than 600 people attempting to cross the Mediterranean on board a drifting fishing vessel were rescued yesterday by a merchant vessel and coastguards off Calabria, at the southern tip of Italy.
They were landed in several ports in Sicily.
The authorities also recovered five bodies of migrants who had died in so far undetermined circumstances.
“The Mediterranean is becoming the biggest cemetery of the desperate,” president of the Sicily region Nello Musumeci said in a statement.
On the island of Lampedusa, some 522 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, among others, arrived from the late hours of Saturday in 15 different boats from Tunisia and Libya.
According to the Italian media, the island’s reception centre has been overwhelmed.
With a capacity of 250-300 people, it currently hosts 1,200, according to the Ansa news agency.
According to La Sicilia daily, the latest arrivals on Lampedusa came both by ships carrying dozens, even hundreds of people, as well as by small inflatable boats.
Four Tunisians, including one woman, ran aground during the night on the beach of Cala Pisana after crossing the stretch of sea separating Tunisia and the Italian island, the daily said.
At the same time, it said that coastguards had intercepted a 13-metre (43-foot) ship which had departed from the northwestern Libyan city of Zawiya with 123 people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and Sudan on board.
NGOs continued to recover hundreds of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean.
SeaWatch reported that it had carried out four rescue operations yesterday.
“On board SeaWatch3, we have 428 people, including women and children, a woman nine months pregnant and a patient with severe burns,” it said on its Twitter account.
🔴 Medical evacuation from the #SeaWatch3! The Italian Coast Guard has brought ashore a heavily pregnant woman accompanied by her husband & a child with severe burns with its parents.
— Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) July 24, 2022
The remaining 439 people are still waiting for a port of safety. pic.twitter.com/DVt68Adqes
Ocean Viking, run by non-governmental organisation SOS Mediterranean, said it carried out two rescue operations today.
First, it recovered 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, who were crammed onto “an overcrowded inflatable boat in distress in international waters off Libya”.
Then 108 people, including many women and children, were found in similar conditions.
The NGO said “195 people are now being cared for aboard the Ocean Viking”.
The Central Mediterranean migration route is the most dangerous in the world.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that 990 people have died and disappeared since the beginning of the year.
The latest inflow of migrants comes at a politically sensitive time in Italy.
Reformist Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned last week after being toppled by parties in his national unity government.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella has dissolved parliament and set September 25 for new elections to be held.
But Draghi’s coalition could be replaced by a government dominated by the eurosceptic Brothers of Italy party and the pro-Russian, anti-immigration League.
Together the two parties are polling at almost 40 percent of the vote.
In a tweet today, Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, condemned the arrival of “411 illegal migrants… in a few hours on Lampedusa”.
“On September 25, Italians will be able to finally choose change: for the return of security, of courage and of border control,” he wrote.
Salvini has been on trial in Italy, where he is accused of stopping a migrant boat from docking and leaving 147 people stranded at sea in dire conditions while he was immigration minister in 2019. He denies the allegations.
The next court hearings are set to take place in September.
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There has to be a point where enough is enough. Send them straight back and apply the official route.
@Martin O Connell: these people are desperate, risking their lives … would you say the same if they were Ukrainian ..?
@Ciaran: Yes
@John: Jesus you are lovely.
And I say that knowing the difference between what can and should be deemed a true refugee and the catch all asylum seeker term which is used for more than true refugees these days.
@Martin O Connell: The only thing that will stop this invasion is a few sin kings.
Close the borders
Send them back as we have no more houses
@Peter Jo: we as in .. Italy ?
Let them in…
There was little migration from Africa before Europeans (of who we are now part of) arrived and forced the people of Africa to migrate. We Europeans continued to murder them for centuries and to steal and pillage all their natural resources for our own benefit right up to the present day. As a result of exploitation and now the contribution of western and Chinese caused climate change we have destroyed these countries….. figuratively speaking we have burned these people homes, destroyed their land and salted the earth so they can’t regrow crops ….. then you get people here on the journal saying that we again Europeans should tell them that they can’t come here. The only other option is to fix the damage caused by centuries of exploitation of robbing Africa of their natural resources
@Daithí O’Cathail: Irish people are not responsible for what happened to Africa . The Chinese are plundering Africa as we speak . No they need to weed out political corruption and sort their countries out . Typical lefty nonsense
@Robert Preston: Irish people are also European and Europeans are 100 percent responsible for the plundering of Africa for centuries … you can’t say we are just Irish and not European and wash our hands of the damage that Europe has done to Africa….
@Daithí O’Cathail: Yes we can. I would never call myself European. I’m Irish, thats it. The Irish never plundered Africa.
@Daithí O’Cathail: so what you are saying is guilt by association.
@Daithí O’Cathail: Surely you are not trying to equate Ireland with the likes of the Brits, Belgians, French and Dutch etc etc. I have enough sins of my own to cope with rather than deal with their whoppers. I reckon those with past sins are happy to see the problem being spread i.e.refugees coming to Ireland rather than them having to take responsibility. Brexit arrived in time for u no who.
have your say