Some 1,200 immigrants arrived in the last 24 hours on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, causing a new saturation in the reception center, with more than 1,400 people.
The Italian Coast Guard rescued several small boats on Tuesday, while another vessel, with 43 Sudanese on board, managed to independently reach one of the island’s coves.
During the night, another 394 immigrants disembarked, having been intercepted by patrol boats from the Port Authority, the Guardia di Finanza and a ship from Frontex, the European border control agency.
In total, 1,202 immigrants arrived in the last 24 hours, according to the media, from Sfax, in Tunisia, and from Sabratha and Zuara, in Libya.
Early in the morning, the SOS Mediterranee non-governmental organization (NGO) ship, the Ocean Viking, also arrived at the port of Ortona, in the central region of Abruzzo, with 128 migrants rescued in three operations off the coast. coast of Libya, in recent days.
As has happened on other occasions, the NGO denounced the assignment of a distant port by the Italian authorities so that immigrants would have to face “three useless days of navigation.”
With these new arrivals, the island’s reception center, with capacity for about 300 people, welcomes 1,430 immigrants, and operations have begun to transfer them to other locations in Italy.
According to data updated on Tuesday by the Ministry of the Interior, 147,239 migrants arrived on the Italian coast, compared to 92,881 in the same period last year.
Source: TSF
