Nearly 700 migrants were rescued on Saturday off Italy, the Italian coast guard announced on Sunday July 24, which also recovered five corpses.
Hundreds of other migrants are waiting on board humanitarian ships, a recurring influx every summer, but which comes this year in the midst of the legislative campaign for which the far right is given the favourite.
On the island of Lampedusa, 522 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia in particular arrived overnight from Saturday to Sunday aboard fifteen different boats, in from Tunisia and Libya.
According to the Italian media, the reception center of this small rock closer to Africa than to Italy is overwhelmed.
With a capacity of 250-300 people, it currently houses 1,200, says the Ansa agency.
Migrants who manage to reach the coasts of Lampedusa or Sicily travel on old and overloaded skiffs, in deplorable sanitary conditions, often without life jackets, with meager food, and under a blazing sun.
The daily La Sicilia specifies that the last landings in Lampedusa saw ships with dozens, even hundreds of people on board, but also small inflatables.
Thus, four Tunisians, including a woman, were stranded in the night on the beach of Cala Pisana after crossing the small arm of the sea which separates Tunisia from the island.
Simultaneously, the coastguards intercepted a 13-meter vessel, leaving Zaouïa in Libya, with 123 Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Sudanese on board.
most dangerous road
In addition, sea rescue NGOs continue to recover hundreds of migrants lost in the Mediterranean.
Sea-Watch said on Sunday it carried out four rescue operations on Saturday.
"Aboard the 'Sea-Watch-3', we have 428 people, including women and children, a nine-month pregnant woman and a patient with severe burns," she said on her Twitter account.
"L'Ocean-Viking", from the NGO SOS Méditerranée, said it had recovered 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, crammed into "an overcrowded inflatable boat in distress in international waters off Libya".
Between January 1 and July 22, 34,000 people arrived by sea in Italy, compared to 25,500 in the same period of 2021 and 10,900 in 2020, according to the Interior Ministry.
The Central Mediterranean migration route is the most dangerous in the world.
The International Organization for Migration estimates the number of dead and missing there at 990 since the beginning of the year.
This seasonal increase in arrivals during the summer coincides this year in Italy with a turbulent political context.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi, let go by several parties making up his government of national unity, has resigned.
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, dissolved the parliament and fixed for September 25 elections for which the right and the extreme right are given favourites.
Sunday morning on Twitter, Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega (anti-immigration), deplored the arrival of "411 illegal immigrants in a few hours in Lampedusa".
“On September 25, Italians will finally be able to choose change: for the return of security, courage and border control,” he wrote.
With AFP
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