Spain boat saves 60 migrants but Italy locks ports

■ THE vessel, Open Arms, run by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, said it rescued the migrants — including five women, a nine- yearold child and three teenagers

Madrid, June 30: A Spanish rescue boat plucked 60 migrants Saturday from a rubber dinghy held together with duct tape in the Mediterranean Sea near Libya, igniting another political row between Italy and Malta over who should let the aid boat dock.

The vessel, Open Arms, run by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, said it rescued the migrants — including five women, a nine- yearold child and three teenagers — after it spotted the rubber boat just floating in the sea. Later in the day, Spanish authorities reporting saving 63 other people trying to reach its southern coast.

While European politicians bickered about where the migrants should go, those rescued by the Open Arms were jubilant, jumping, chanting and hugging their rescuers.

Bitcha Honoree said he knew the risk he was taking when he boarded the dinghy with 59 others in the middle of the night with only the full moon illuminating the dark water. Some of his friends had survived past crossings from Libya and made it to Europe but others had drowned.

But after having been sold as a slave, kidnapped and tortured in Libya while awaiting his chance to get aboard a smuggler's boat, the 39- year- old Honoree, from Cameroon, decided he needed to try.

"It's better to die than to continue being treated this bad," he told The Associated Press just moments after being rescued some 30 nautical miles off the coast of Libya.