Italy to address migrant issue on small island
Italian officials ROME — hastily chartered more ferries Sunday and put other measures into place to fight severe overcrowding at migrant centersonthe tiny island of Lampedusa, where the arrival of 450 migrants on a rickety fishing boat triggered protests by islanders.
Meanwhile, a fire triggered an explosion Sunday on smuggling boat off of southern Italy, tossing 21 migrants into the sea and killing at least 3 of them, the local prefect’s office said.
The twin developments were just the latest challenges in Italy’s unending struggle to handle the thousands of migrants and refugees who cross theMediterranean Sea each year in search of a better life.
Five migrants and two police were injured in the explosion on the sailboat off Calabria on the Italian mainland.Coast guard and customs police vesselswere searching for one migrant who was missing, the Crotone prefect’s office told The Associated Press.
According to survivors, the sailboat carried migrants fromSriLanka, Egypt, Somalia and Pakistan. Ten of the rescued were minors, the prefect’s office said.
Bathers on a beach near Isola di Capo Rizzuto, on the Ionian Sea, watched a column of thick smoke rise fromblazing boat. The cause of the fire was under investigation.
While manymigrants try to reach Italy in flimsysmuggling boats launched from Libya, this year has seen most migrants depart from
Tunisia or other points.
OnLampedusa, a migrant center meant to house fewer than 200 became crammed with 1,200 people after the recent arrivals.
Lampedusa Mayor Toto’ Martello expressed astonishment that a fishing boat carrying 450 migrants managed to get within a fewkilometers of the island without being noticed by military vessels or aircraft, including the European Frontex border mission. The islanders protested Saturday, with some crying “Enough!”
“Last night was a sit-in but I will call a strike” thisweek, with storekeepers shuttering shops for a day, Martello said, adding that the strike is aimed“against a government which doesn’t have a strategy” to deal with migrants.
Hours after his comments, Italy’s Interior Ministry announced that a 90-meter (300-foot) coast guard vessel was being dispatched to take 200 migrants off of Lampedusa, and that other military vessels on Sunday nightwould transfer to Sicily 128 migrantswho had tested negative for COVID-19.
In addition, three chartered ferries plan to arrive by midweek to take onboard hundreds of other migrants from Lampedusa so they could continue their quarantines.
Aweek earlier, citing concerns over COVID-19 infections, Sicily’s governor ordered migrant processing centers on the large Mediterranean island to shut down. But Italy’s center-left government, which is in charge of migrant policy nationwide, went to court and the governor’s order was stayed pending a hearing next month.