Fate of 600 migrants uncertain even after Spain offers to help

ROME — Spain stepped up Monday and offered to take in a rescue ship carrying more than 600 migrants after Italy and Malta refused. The diplomatic standoff left the migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea and laid bare the brass-knuckled negotiating tactics of Italy’s new anti-immigrant government.

The U.N. refugee agency, the European Union, Germany and humanitarian groups had all demanded that Italy and Malta put their domestic politics aside and urgently consider the plight of the 629 migrants, among them more than 120 children, seven pregnant women and people suffering from hypothermia. Italy quickly thanked Spain’s new Socialist prime minister for the offer to receive aid group SOS Mediterranee’s ship at the Port of Valencia and announced that it had forced a turning point in Europe’s migrant crisis.

Yet it wasn’t certain if the voyage to Spain was feasible for the ship given the ship’s location and how long the rescue vessel had been at sea. The Aquarius on Monday was more than 750 nautical miles from Valencia and by late Monday said it hadn’t received any instructions to head to Spain. “It means that we need at least two more days of sailing, which is not possible today with 629 people on board,” SOS Mediterranee Maritime Operations Manager Antoine Laurent said. “The situation is stable but it cannot run” forever.

Doctors Without Borders, which has staff aboard the Aquarius, said the rescued migrants were stable but that food and water on the ship would run out by Monday night. It said some passengers had seawater in their lungs as well as chemical burns caused when gasoline mixes with seawater.

Late Monday, Malta sent a motorboat with food and water to resupply the ship.

“The duty of a democratic government is not to look away” in a humanitarian crisis, said Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who also offered her port as a potential solution to the standoff.

Despite the diplomatic pressure, Italy and Malta held firm, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini clearly using the drama as a pretext to force the hand of Italy’s European neighbors. Italy has long demanded that the EU change its migration policy and make good on promises to accept more refugees, saying that Italy has been left alone to coordinate rescues and accept tens of thousands of migrants a year for asylum processing.