A traveling avalanche shook Italy within ten days. A total of 3,000 new migrants have arrived on its shores in the last 24 hours alone.. Specifically, to the ports of Lampedusa and Porto Empedocle in southern Sicily, where the Astral sailing boat, owned by the Spanish NGO Open Arms, docked. A boat belonging to this NGO carried out 15 rescue operations. Meanwhile, the Italian Coast Guard recovered a body from a shipwreck near the rocky island of Marettimo on Sunday.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly demanded that the Tunisian government of Kais Saied, with whom it has signed several agreements on the matter, put an end to the flood of boats leaving its shores. Now, in the full growth of the migration phenomenon, Meloni has been practically seen forced to ask NGOs for help in dealing with various emergencies. A measure that is at odds with the government’s strong anti-immigrant agenda.
Last week, a merchant ship picked up four survivors adrift on a smuggler’s boat without an engine. The survivors told how they were thrown into the sea by the waves and 41 of their fellow passengers did not survive. Pope Francis addressed the public in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday. “It is with pain and shame that we must say that since the beginning of the year almost 2,000 men, women and children have lost their lives at sea en route to Europe.”said the Pope, referring to the number of known deaths reported by UN agencies in recent days. “It’s an open wound in our humanity.”
Migrants rescued from more than 60 boats have landed on the island of Lampedusa since Friday, including about 400 people as of early Sunday. these arrivals They increased the number of asylum seekers in the island’s temporary accommodation for immigrants to 2,000which, according to Pierluigi De Ascentiis, a member of the Italian Red Cross, should not accommodate more than 450 people.
On Pantelleria, an arid island known for its VIP holiday homes, 250 migrants set out on Saturday without having to be rescuedaccording to the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
While the large minority of migrants who reached Italian shores in recent days had left Tunisia, a rescue ship belonging to the humanitarian group Emergency sailed to Naples on Sunday carrying 76 migrants, whose boat had left Libya on Thursday. According to the organization, it capsized in international waters within Malta’s search and rescue zone. The immigrants come from Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia and Eritreaand among them are seven women and twenty-four minors, the smallest of them seven months old.
The Meloni coalition government, whose main partner is Matteo Salvini’s League, has tried A few months ago, the time that charity ships stay at sea for rescue operations was limited. The partners claim they essentially encourage smugglers to launch the boats in the hope that humanitarian groups would eventually ensure the safe arrival of passengers.
The measures stipulate that humanitarian ships will enter the port immediately after each rescue operation and will not remain at sea to help others. But lately it seems so Charity vessels in the central Mediterranean are increasingly taking on rescue dutiesBecause the number of migrants who have arrived in Italy by sea so far this year, according to the Interior Ministry – around 95,000 – is more than twice as high as in the same period last year.