Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Rescue ship with migrants stays at sea

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ROME — A private rescue ship carrying 629 migrants remained Sunday evening on a northward course in the Mediterran­ean Sea after more than a day of not receiving permission to dock in either Italy or the small island nation of Malta.

Aid group SOS Mediterran­ee said the passengers on its ship, the Aquarius, included 400 people who were picked up by the Italian navy, the country’s coast guard and private cargo ships and transferre­d. The rescue ship’s crew itself pulled 229 migrants from the water or from trafficker­s’ unseaworth­y boats Saturday night, including 123 unaccompan­ied minors and seven pregnant women.

The Aquarius and its passengers were caught up in a crackdown implemente­d by the right-wing partner in Italy’s new populist government, which has vowed to stop the country from becoming the “refugee camp of Europe.”

“Starting today, Italy, too, begins to say NO to the traffickin­g of human beings, NO to the business of clandestin­e immigratio­n,” Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-migrant League party, tweeted Sunday.

Salvini and Italian Transporta­tion Minister Danilo Toninelli, who is part of the 5-Star Movement faction in the new government, said in a joint statement Sunday that it was Malta’s responsibi­lity to open its ports for the ship.

But the Maltese government said in a statement that the Aquarius took on the passengers in waters controlled by Libya and where Italian authoritie­s coordinate search-andrescue operations.

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