The Spanish government announced Tuesday that it was sending a military boat to recover the migrants rescued by the NGO Open Arms boat, currently parked near the Italian island of Lampedusa where they have been barred from landing since Thursday.
The ship Audaz "will leave this afternoon at 17 hours, will sail for three days to Lampedusa where he will take charge of the people collected by the Open Arms" and will transport them to the port of Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands, the government said in a statement.
A situation "out of control"
The Spanish NGO Proactiva, whose ship Open Arms carries a hundred migrants, had refused on Sunday the proposal of Spain to host his ship. Faced with Rome's refusal to let them land on the island, Madrid ended up proposing Sunday to the ship to join Algeciras, in the extreme south of Spain, which the NGO has deemed "absolutely unachievable".
But Tuesday, in a desperate gesture, fifteen migrants, some without lifejackets, threw themselves into the sea to try to swim to Lampedusa. "The situation is out of control," Proactiva Open Arms said on Twitter. Spain then announced earlier today that it would propose a new solution to recover the migrants aboard the ship.