River crash kills 11 at World Cup city
ITALY HAS dispatched two ships to help take 629 migrants stuck off its shores to Spain after the new populist government refused them safe port in a bid to force Europe to share the burden of unrelenting arrivals.
The rescue ship Aquarius has been stuck since Saturday in international waters off the coast of Italy and Malta, both of which have refused it entry.
French president Emmanuel Macron yesterday criticised the Italian government over the crisis.
The ship is carrying 629 migrants including 123 unaccompanied minors, 11 children and six pregnant women.
Aid group Doctors Without Borders, which operates the Aquarius with SOS Mediterranee, urged Italy and Malta to reconsider their refusal to allow the stranded migrants landfall and then safe passage to Spain, which has responded to their plight with an offer of safe harbour.
The aid group warned of severe health risks to a significant number of the passengers.
Italy’s new anti-immigrant interior minister Matteo Salvini is making good on a campaign pledge to close Italian ports to non-governmental organisations that pick up migrants at sea, which he has likened to taxi services for people smugglers.
Mr Salvini, whose League party is part of the populist coalition that took office this month, promised voters that other European countries would be made to share the burden of caring for asylum-seekers arriving in Italy on unseaworthy boats mostly from lawless Libya.
“These are all foreign ships flying foreign flags that bring this human cargo to Italy,” Mr Salvini said in a TV interview.
“We have hosted 650,000 migrants in recent years alone, all of whom pass by Malta, an EU country, and the government says, ‘Ciao, Ciao, go to Italy’. I am happy to have given a small first response.”
Mr Macron’s spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said the French president recalled that “in cases of distress, those with the nearest coastline have a responsibility to respond”.
“There is a degree of cynicism and irresponsibility in the Italian government’s behaviour,” he quoted President Macron as saying.
Hundreds of migrants aboard the Aquarius are being transferred to ships operated by the Italian navy and coastguard, which will take them to Valencia.
Eleven people have been killed as two boats collided near a city that is hosting World Cup matches, including England’s opener against Tunisia on June 18.
The accident occurred late on Monday on the Volga River near Volgograd in southern Russia. According to officials, a barge being pulled by a towboat collided with a paddleboat carrying 16 sightseers.
A medical examiner investigating the case said the captain of the paddleboat was drunk.