Italy allocated safe ports to three migrant rescue ships on Friday due to bad weather, the government said on Saturday. However, according to him, this is not a “flip-flop” of the management of humanitarian NGOs operating in the Mediterranean.
Geo Parents, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) boat, was due to dock at Salerno (South) port on Sunday morning to offload 248 migrants rescued during several operations in recent days. The German ship Louis-Michel arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Friday with 33 migrants on board.
Finally Humanity 1, the NGO SOS Humanity’s German-flagged boat, should reach the port of Bari (Southeast) in the next few hours after rescuing 261 people.
Due to bad weather
“There is nothing about immigration, about face,” a source at the Italian interior ministry said on Saturday. “The ministry approved the entry of ships because bad weather was approaching and navigational conditions would have quickly put people on board at risk,” he added.
These are the first ships to be welcomed by Italy, which has been taken care of by several humanitarian ships, including Geo Parents, after it refused to allow hundreds of rescued migrants to disembark in November.
Under pressure, particularly from the European Union, the government of far-right Prime Minister Georgia Meloni agreed to evacuate the most vulnerable survivors, while continuing to deny entry to its ports to the French-run SOS Mediterranean ship Ocean Viking.
A sharp rise
Rome continues to condemn the “provocative and dangerous actions” of NGOs “supporting the entry into Italy of economic migrants who do not have the right to enter and stay in Italy,” according to an Interior Ministry source.
This year, Italy has seen a sharp increase in sea crossings into its territory. The same period is 2021 and 2020, the years of the health crisis.
Most of these migrants were rescued by the Italian coast guard, but Rome has strongly criticized rescue operations by vessels chartered by NGOs accused of creating a draft.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
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