More than 2,700 migrants have reached the southern Italian shores in the past 24 hours, according to Italian authorities, who reported landing some 2,000 people on the island of Lampedusa alone.
Even according to the authorities, the migrant reception shelters are overcrowded. The Coast Guard also announced that it located the bodies of seven people after the sinking, on Friday night, of two boats near the island of Malta, ten migrants having been rescued from these shipwrecks, according to the local press.
Italy and Malta saw the number of ships crossing the central Mediterranean multiply this weekend.
On the southern shore, Tunisia said it had stopped the departure of more than 70 boats in a period of uninterrupted movement for weeks.
In Lampedusa, 290 migrants arrived this morning from seven boats rescued by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Louise Michel and the Guardia di Finanza patrols, which have maritime supervision powers.
Previously, between Friday and today, more than 1,700 people arrived on the island in 43 different landings that saturated the reception capacity of the shelters, with capacity for 400, announced the Agrigento city council after having requested the transfer of a group of migrants to another port.
On the mainland, in the Calabria region, another 550 migrants arrived on Friday afternoon, most of whom disembarked in Crotone, the city where 89 people died a month ago as a result of a shipwreck.
For their part, the Italian authorities assigned this Friday the port of Bari, in the south of the country, to the ship Geo Barents, of the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a few hours after the rescue of 190 migrants in the Center. Mediterranean.
Another vessel, Life Support from the NGO Emergency, rescued 78 people in a rubber dinghy, including 28 unaccompanied minors and a pregnant woman.
So far this year, more than 20,000 migrants have landed on Italian shores, more than triple the 6,500 in the same period in 2022, according to official figures.
Source: TSF
