A wooden barge during a rescue operation off the Libyan coast March 29, 2022. Yannis Behrakis (Portal)
The Italian Coast Guard this Friday launched the rescue of three boats with more than a thousand migrants on board in an area between Sicily and Calabria. In one of them, at least 500 migrants, including many children, are traveling crowded and have asked for help when water enters the fishing boat they are using to try to reach the Italian coast. The Alarm Phone service, a private switchboard that takes emergency calls from migrant boats, sent out an alert early this morning due to the high number of people on board.
Some of the passengers on the boat explained that they had left Libya and that the situation at sea was complicated. “We have alerted the responsible authorities. Do not waste time, send emergency services immediately”, the telephone service has indicated on its social networks. Italian authorities have confirmed that “numerous rescue operations are underway” affecting “more than 1,000 immigrants at risk” as two other boats were sighted. The rescues in the Italian area of responsibility are particularly “complex” due to the high number of occupants of the drifting boats, the authorities say. For this reason, the Coast Guard requested help from the Navy in the afternoon, which sent a military ship to the rescue area, the Ministry of Defense confirmed.
According to Italian media, the fishing boat, which had informed about its situation by telephone, had already been located by a plane from the European border protection agency Frontex, which also sighted and alerted the barge that later sank on February 25 a few meters off the coast of Calabria, an event in which ultimately 73 people lost their lives.
The newspaper La Repubblica points out that a US Navy helicopter also sighted the ship and reported that it may have left the coast of the Cyrenaica region (Libya) and, based on its last known position, around 9:00 a.m. (same time). surveyed ) on the Spanish mainland) in the direction of the east coast of Sicily in the direction of Syracuse.
The head of operations of the NGO Mediterranea, Luca Casarini, warned that “it is a dangerous situation” and also called for the immediate intervention of the Italian Coast Guard.
The demands for rapid intervention follow the criticism of the past few days of the Italian government’s actions after the shipwreck off the coast of Calabria. On this Friday of all days, the fire brigade reported that they had just recovered the lifeless body of a child from the water, the last victim so far.
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Crotona’s Attorney’s Office has launched an investigation into the possibility that the February Coast Guard and Financial Guard rescue operation was delayed. A group of about 40 Italian and European civil society associations, including Médecins Sans Frontières, have filed a class action lawsuit with the same public prosecutor’s office to clarify any unclear points about what happened. “With such a high number of deaths and who knows how many have disappeared, there must be clarity. There must be no gray areas about possible responsibilities in the rescue machinery,” the organizations emphasize.
At a press conference this Thursday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defended the official leadership that had been heavily questioned in recent days. “Do any of you think that the Italian authorities failed to do something they could have done?” He went on to talk about far-right politics. And he defended that on that occasion Frontex warned of the “arrival of irregular immigrants” and never warned of “risk of shipwreck”.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 migrants are still crammed into Lampedusa’s 300-seat reception center after the wave of landings in recent days. On Thursday alone, 1,869 people arrived on the small Italian island.
Since the beginning of the year and up to this Friday, about 18,000 migrants have arrived on the Italian coasts, according to the Interior Ministry, compared with 6,000 in the same period of 2022.
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