There are 2,497 migrants in the Lampedusa hotspot. About 300 people will be taken from the pavilions of the Imbriacola district to the port, where the migrants will be embarked on the scheduled ferry that will arrive in Porto Empedocle at dawn tomorrow. The prefecture of Agrigento, in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior, ordered the transfer to facilitate attendance. Tomorrow at dawn 130 will leave for Pozzallo (Ragusa) with a patrol boat of the Guardia di Finanza.
Dozens of barges, dinghies and small boats leave the port of Sfax, organized in groups or prey to smugglers. The tide of migrants crossing the Tunisian route to reach the Italian coasts seems unstoppable: in the last 24 hours, over three thousand migrants have set off and more than sixty have disembarked. In the North African country, the economic crisis and political tensions have led to a staggering increase in departures, which is now alarming Europe and the Italian government. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi also spoke on the issue of migrants, who underlined “a change of pace mainly thanks to Meloni” in relation to the issue on the Union’s agenda, adding: “Europe still has to take some steps towards the inevitable selfishness of secondary migration under the Dublin regulation. The only way to limit them is to block landings”. In addition, “the European Councils do not provide a solution that will be implemented the next day”. Anyway, Tunis is only a transit area to sail towards the Mediterranean: the refugees, Those leaving are originally from Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Guinea, Sierra Leone, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco and Burkina Faso, many say after paying three thousand Tunisian dinars for the passage.
Migrants, 400 land in Pozzallo from the ship Diciotti
And the local coastguard’s activity is relentless, reporting it has foiled 79 exit attempts and rescued 2,982 people aboard boats in trouble off the coast of Sfax and Chebba in the past three days. Rescue operations are also continuing in the Italian SAR (Search and Rescue) area. There are already 2,500 migrants rescued by our authorities between Sicily and Calabria under the coordination of the Coast Guard. Another 190 shipwrecked people are aboard the Geo Barents, MSF’s ship bound for the port of Bari, while 78 were recovered by Emergency’s Life Support in Maltese waters. On Lampedusa, in addition to the people rescued by the Banksy-funded NGO ship Louise Michel, another 294 arrived in various autonomous landings. The already congested hotspot in Imbriacola County has seen a record of over 2,250 arrivals in twenty-four hours, compared to just under four hundred locations, and about fifty landings have been recorded on the island. Rescues and arrivals are increasing, but so is the death toll.
Migrants land in Lampedusa port: other boats have arrived
The latest drama at sea occurred in the Maltese Sar area, where at least seven bodies were recovered by Coast Guard patrol boats and the intervening Italian Yellow Flames after two small boats sank. The harbor master’s office managed to rescue about ten people, while others were rescued by a Tunisian fishing boat that was in the area and then escorted to the port of Lampedusa. Just hours earlier, 34 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa had lost contact off the Tunisian coast: they are still missing after the boat they were traveling on sank. “Because we can’t reach most of the boats, we’re trying to determine which ones have arrived, are intercepted, or capsized. Major rescue efforts are needed,” explains Alarm Phone, the independent organization that supports migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. The latter also reported a boat in danger with about 84 people off the coast of Libya, but the Sos Mediterranée activists who approached the boat were threatened by the Libyan authorities, who fired shots in the air. There are also those who already have to go back. In Syracuse, the commissioner issued 52 refoulement orders for as many Egyptian migrants who arrived in Augusta last Thursday night after being intercepted offshore by the port authority: they were part of a group of 83 that included 24 Syrian asylum seekers, and now they will have to leave the territory within a week.
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