Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is once again demanding a European allocation agreement before allowing 135 migrants to be rescued on Thursday night and now stranded on a ship belonging to the Italian coastguard, the Gregoretti. "I will not give any authorization to disembark before having received the commitment of Europe to welcome all the migrants on board.Let's see if they pass words to action.I do not give in," said Friday Matteo Salvini.
Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced an agreement between 14 European countries to implement a "solidarity mechanism" to distribute the rescued migrants in the Mediterranean. These statements had angered Matteo Salvini, because Emmanuel Macron had said that migrants would still have to land first in Italy.
Rescued by a star of the Italian Coast Guard
Gregoretti's migrants were on board two makeshift boats, reported by Tunisian fishermen for the first time and by Italian fishermen for the second, the day when more than 110 other migrants disappeared in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya.
Italian fishermen said they stayed for 24 hours with the boat they had spotted on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, 50 nautical miles from Malta, to assist and reassure the fifty migrants on board waiting for help . "We gave them water, crackers ... We stayed in constant contact with the (Italian) coastguards, but Malta never responded," Carlo Giarratano told reporters. Captain of the fishing boat, on his return Thursday morning to the port of Sciacca, in the west of Sicily. Finally, an Italian Coast Guard star arrived from Lampedusa Island to rescue them and transfer them to the Gregoretti, where they joined the other rescued migrants in the evening.
Many NGO ships detained by judicial or administrative investigations
On Wednesday, Italian police and coast guards rescued 77 people, more than half women and minors, who had left Libya three days earlier and were all taken to Lampedusa. On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, two boats arrived from Tunisia with a total of 34 people on board, including a dozen children. On Thursday, the Maltese Navy rescued and brought to Valletta 76 migrants found on a boat that was taking water. And Friday, the smallest country in the EU has still welcomed 67 other migrants found on a boat in distress.
All these departures took place in the absence of NGO ships: many are still held back by judicial or administrative investigations. The Alan Kurdi of the German NGO Sea-Eye left Mallorca Thursday, the Open Arms of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms is in Syracuse and the Ocean Viking , the new ship of SOS Mediterranean, is Friday was approaching the Strait of Gibraltar.