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Rising migrant arrivals are putting further pressure on the conservative government of Giorgia Meloni, which came to power last October vowing to curb the flow of undocumented people but is facing a surge in such landings from North Africa and Turkey.
At least 1,300 people have been rescued in the past few hours off the coast of southern Italy in three separate operations, according to the Italian coast guard, just two weeks after 74 migrants died when their boat struck rocks near the coast.
“The rescues were complex due to the fact that the boats were overloaded with immigrants and the unfavorable sea conditions,” the coast guard said in a statement.
The agents said that one of their ships rescued 500 migrants from a boat more than 100 miles out to sea, and that it had later taken them to the city of Reggio Calabria. Another 379 immigrants were taken from another boat in the same vicinity and will be brought ashore shortly.
Another fishing boat packed with 487 immigrants was escorted to the Calabrian port of Crotone, tied to a tugboat for stability. The danger alerts were issued by the Alarm Phone service, a private center that receives distress calls from migrant boats.
Local authorities said that another 200 people were picked up off the Sicilian coast and would be transferred to Catania throughout the day, while on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a fishing and tourist enclave in southern Sicily, some 3,000 recently arrived migrants they overwhelmed the shelter with capacity for less than 350 people. Hundreds of migrants spent the night there sleeping on mattresses and piled up.
This is one of the operations with the most mobilization in recent months and in which the Navy even had to intervene to avoid reliving the tragic shipwreck of February 26.
So far this year, more than 17,000 people have arrived in Italy, 4,000 of them this week, up from 6,000 in the first two and a half months of 2022. Hundreds more have also died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe.
Investigate deaths
Authorities recovered the body of a girl near where a migrant boat broke up on February 26, bringing the death toll in that catastrophe to 74. 79 people survived the shipwreck, but about 30 are still missing, presumably dead.
The United Nations estimates that 300 migrants have died in the central Mediterranean so far this year. The prosecution investigates the Italian authorities, accusing them that they should have done more to prevent the disaster. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni rejected the accusation, placing the blame squarely on human smugglers operating in migrant-sending countries.
This week the Meloni government toughened prison sentences for human traffickers and promised to open more avenues for legal migration. Late last year, Meloni cracked down on charitable rescue boats, accusing them of acting as a taxi service for migrants.
Migration policies have led to a sharp reduction in the number of rescue ships patrolling the Mediterranean, although they do not deter migrants from making the journey. Enrico Borghi, a senator from the center-left Democratic Party, accused the government of minimizing the crisis.
“He thinks he can solve such a deep problem with media posturing, the penal code and false efforts to appear tough,” the congressman wrote on Twitter. “The result: landings have tripled under the Meloni government,” he added.
For her part, the far-right president urged a joint European effort to reinforce the borders of the European Union and toughen and increase cooperation on expulsions.
With EFE, Reuters and AP
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