Hundreds of migrants saved at sea
ROME — Two Italian ports faced an influx of hundreds of migrants Saturday, as a charity ship sailed toward a Sicilian port with 236 people rescued in the Mediterranean from traffickers’ boats, while the Italian coast guard and border police brought 532 others to a tiny island.
The maritime rescue group SOS Mediterranee said a ship it operates, Ocean Viking, pulled the migrants to safety four days ago from two rubber dinghies. Upon instructions from Italian authorities, the Ocean Viking was sailing to Augusta, Sicily, with its passengers, who it said included 119 unaccompanied minors.
SOS Mediterranee said some passengers told rescuers they were beaten by smugglers based in Libya and forced to embark on the unseaworthy dinghies despite high waves.
On Italy’s southern island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than to the Italian mainland, Mayor Salvatore Martello said migrants from four boats that needed rescue stepped ashore overnight. They were brought to safety by Italian coast guard and customs police boats.
Separately, an Italian navy vessel rescued 49 migrants, Italian state TV reported.
Still in the central Mediterranean Sea on Saturday was another charity boat, Sea-Watch 4. It had 308 people aboard who had been rescued in four separate operations from trafficker launched vessels, SeaWatch said in a statement. The first rescue, of 44 people, took place Thursday, it said.
Sea-Watch 4 has requested a port to disembark the migrants from both Italy and Malta.
“The fact that we, as a civil rescue ship, saved so many people from distress at sea in such a short time again demonstrates the fundamental rescue gap European states have created at the world’s most dangerous maritime border,” said Hannah Wallace Bowman, the head of mission for SeaWatch 4.
Warmer weather in the spring often increases the number of vessels launched toward Europe by Libyabased migrant traffickers.
Last month, several bodies from a shipwrecked dinghy were spotted, believed to have been carrying 130 migrants. People on the boat had appealed for help in the waters off Libya, but no coast guard vessels from Libya, Italy or Malta came to their aid, the group said. No survivors were found.
Humanitarian groups have been urging European
Union nations to resume the deployment of military vessels on rescue patrols in the Mediterranean.
After hundreds of thousands of rescued migrants, many of them ineligible for asylum, were brought to Italy by ships from the coast guard, navy, border police and other nations, largescale rescue operations in the sea north of Libya were ended.
Italy has been equipping and training the Libyan coast guard to rescue migrants in their search-andrescue area and to discourage traffickers.
Human rights groups and United Nations agencies have denounced inhumane treatment at Libyan detention centers, where migrants rescued or intercepted by the Libyan coast guard are taken. They say migrants endure beatings, rapes and insufficient rations.