Over 1,000 migrants arrive in Italy within hours

ROME • More than a thousand migrants arrived in Italy within just a few hours while hundreds of others, rescued by humanitarian vessels, were waiting for a port to receive them, activist groups and the authorities said yesterday.

Between Jan 1 and July 22, 34,000 people arrived in Italy by sea compared with 25,500 during the same period last year and 10,900 in 2020, Italy's Interior Ministry said.

Over 600 people trying to cross the Mediterranean on board a drifting fishing vessel were rescued on Saturday by a merchant vessel and coast guards off Calabria, at the southern tip of Italy. They landed in several ports in Sicily.

The authorities also recovered five bodies of migrants who died in undetermined circumstances.

On the island of Lampedusa, some 522 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, among others, arrived from the late hours of Saturday in 15 different boats from Tunisia and Libya.

The island's reception centre has been overwhelmed.

Despite a capacity of 250 to 300 people, it currently hosts 1,200.

Offshore non-governmental organisations (NGOs) continued to recover hundreds of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean.

Sea-Watch reported that it had carried out four rescue operations on Saturday. "On board Sea-Watch3, we have 428 people, including women and children, a woman nine months pregnant and a patient with severe burns," it said on its Twitter account.

Ocean Viking, operated by the NGO SOS Mediterranean, reported that it had recovered 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, who were crammed onto "an overcrowded inflatable boat in distress in international waters off Libya".

The Central Mediterranean migration route is the most dangerous in the world.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that 990 people have died or disappeared since the beginning of the year.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE