Currently, 1,831 people are in the island’s refugee camp. More than 20,000 boat migrants have been registered since the beginning of January.
With more than 2,000 migrants in 24 hours, a new migrant landing record was recorded on the island of Lampedusa. On Saturday night, 267 people arrived on the island after six of the seven boats they were traveling with were saved by the NGO ship “Louise Michel” and Italian Coast Guard patrol boats. On Friday, 43 boat landings with a total of 1,778 people were recorded on Lampedusa.
The island’s refugee camp is currently home to 1,831 people, officials said. In Italy, the arrival of thousands of migrants, who are making their way from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy in mostly unseaworthy boats, has been discussed for several weeks. According to official data, the country has already registered more than 20,000 migrants by boat since the beginning of January – in the two previous years there were around 6,000 at this time.
Again and again there are devastating boat accidents in attempts to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. At the end of February, a shipwreck occurred off the coast of Calabria, killing at least 90 people. Since then, Italy’s right-wing government around Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and the coastguard has been subjected to massive criticism – the charge is that not everything possible has been done to save them.
(APA)