The boat with 500 migrants on board that issued an alert on Friday for being in difficulty was rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and escorted early this morning to the port of Crotone, Calabria (south), where it docked.
According to Italian security forces, the huge wave of ships with illegal immigrants on board continues to devastate the routes in the Mediterranean Sea, where shipwrecks occur and search and rescue teams have been very busy.
Since Thursday, according to the sources, several precarious boats with about a thousand migrants have asked for help and the search and rescue operations, coordinated by the Italian Coast Guard Operations Center, have been especially complex due to the number of people on board. of the boats. Drift and adverse weather conditions.
Around 800 people were rescued and rescue operations continue today with Port Authority and Coast Guard vessels off the coast of Pozzallo, Sicily to help another vessel in distress with 150 migrants on board.
The Alarm Phone organization, which receives requests for help from precarious boats with migrants, warned today of another boat that left Libya with 47 people and that it is adrift, stressing that the sea conditions are “extremely dangerous”, therefore that it is “immediate help”. needed
It was one of the most shocking rescue operations in recent days and in which the Navy had to intervene to avoid reliving the tragic shipwreck of February 26, when a Turkish fishing boat sank and at least 73 people died.
On the other hand, the small island of Lampedusa, the southernmost enclave of Italy and the “gateway to Europe” for immigrants from North Africa, also experienced a day of incessant arrivals that saturated the already precarious local reception center.
In total, more than 3,000 immigrants are crowded into the reception facilities, which have a capacity of barely 300 places, after the wave of arrivals in recent days.
Given this scenario, the Italian government, headed by Giorgia Meloni (extreme right), approved this Thursday a decree law that increases the prison sentences for those considered “traffickers” and for those who are in charge of driving the barges at the orders of organizations criminals on the ground
If caught, they could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. The maximum penalty was, before the reform, five years.
Source: TSF
