Italian ports will be closed to some 310 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean by the Spanish NGO, Proactiva Open Arms, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Saturday after a first refusal by the Maltese authorities. "My answer is clear: the Italian ports are closed!", Tweeted the far-right minister. "For human traffickers and those who help them, the party is over."
"We remain with 311 people on board, without port where to dock, and with needs". Salvini said that the request of the NGO to allow access to Italian territory of men, women, children and babies rescued Friday, was filed after a negative response from Malta. The NGO said that among the migrants, a woman and her baby, born on a Libyan beach, were taken to Malta by a coast guard helicopter. "We stay with 311 people on board, with no port to dock, and with needs," tweeted the NGO on his side.
Proactiva Open Arms announced Friday that it has rescued nearly 300 migrants off Libya, including pregnant women, who were aboard three boats. The NGO posted online a video of some of the migrants rescued from "certain death at sea". "If you could also feel the cold, it would be easier to understand the urgency, no port to land, and Malta's refusal to give us food." This is not Christmas.
The ship resumed at the end of November, along with two other NGO boats, its rescue missions in the central Mediterranean, off the coast of Libya.