Italian navy warns of ‘ biblical exodus’ across Mediterranean

ROME — Italian naval ships have rescued 18,546 migrants, including Syrians and subSaharan Africans, since October, following the deaths of 364 migrants in a boat fire. The peak came this week when the navy intercepted 4,000 migrants in 48 hours.

The unprecedented rescue effort has led the head of the Italian navy, Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, to say the number of migrants sailing from Africa to Italy resembles a “biblical exodus.”

Angelino Alfano, Italy’s interior minister, has claimed that up to 600,000 migrants are preparing to sail from Africa as weather improves in the Mediterranean.

De Giorgi said Italy was deploying large helicopter carriers, frigates, drones and helicopters carrying infrared sensors to monitor the seas.

“The phenomenon is enormous, each migrant ship now contains 200 to 300 and they are also coming in rough seas, so we need frigates to pick them up,” he said. “This is a biblical exodus and turning them back is not part of our mission.”

The largest boat intercepted was carrying 553 migrants, he said. De Giorgi said welltrained traffickers were sailing

The phenomenon is enormous, each migrant ship now contains 200 to 300 and they are also coming in rough seas, so we need frigates to pick them up.

GIUSEPPE DE GIORGI

ITALIAN NAVY ADMIRAL

from Egypt in “mother ships” towing smaller boats carrying hundreds of migrants, which they released in the middle of the Mediterranean.

In November, an Italian submarine that was on exercises in the area had followed a mother ship for 48 hours.

When the mother ship untied a migrant vessel and pulled away at speed, the submarine surfaced and an Arabic- speaking naval officer told migrants to wait to be picked up.

A frigate then chased the mother ship and halted it with machine- gun fire “They were good sailors, not scared,” said De Giorgi, adding the arrest of the traffickers was acting as a deterrent.