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Migrants wait to disembark MSF-chartered ship "Vos Prudence" in the port of Naples, Italy, on May 28, 2017. REUTERS / Ciro De Luca
There are fewer and fewer migrants landed in Italy. The Interior Ministry announces a dramatic decline in the number of people who have joined the coast of the peninsula. With sometimes even whole weeks without any arrival. It has been years since this happened.
With our correspondent in Rome, Anne Tréca
Since January, only 23,000 people have arrived by sea in Italy. That's 96% less than two years ago. They left Libya and Turkey. They are mainly Tunisians, but also Eritreans, Sudanese and Pakistanis to mention the most numerous.
Since August, when Interior Minister Salvini blocked the survivors rescued by the ship Diciotti for 10 days, landings have almost disappeared. Those who arrived did so on their own, without being rescued, most often boats from a dozen Tunisians who arrived on the island of Lampedusa.
Matteo Salvini boasts of having stopped immigration. He is partly right. Other factors prevented the migrants from arriving: the action of the Libyan coast guards first that brought back hundreds of candidates to the ground, the agreements made by the former government with the Libyan militias responsible for trafficking migrants, and setbacks suffered in the chaos of Libya by these same militias now less operational.
For the number of arrivals by sea, Italy is now behind Spain and Greece.
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