Migration: Mediterranean crossings to Italy intensify
This boat loaded with 400 migrating people was rescued by the Italian Coast Guard on April 10, 2023. VIA REUTERS - GIACOMO ZORZI/SEA-WATCH
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In less than 48 hours, nearly 2000,<> migrants, mainly from the coast of Tunisia, in the midst of an economic, political and social crisis, but also from Libya, landed in Sicily.
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With our correspondent in Rome, Anne Le Nir
With the return of sunny days, Italy is facing new and particularly important migratory flows. Since the beginning of the year, more than 28,000 migrants have landed in the south of the country compared to less than 7000,2022 in <>.
On Monday evening, the Italian Coast Guard, helped by Frontex air assets and two merchant ships, managed to overcome the difficulties to rescue, in the territorial waters of its jurisdiction, 1200 people crammed on two fishing boats: first a boat adrift with 800 migrants on board that took the departure from Cyrenaica, then another makeshift boat, carrying 400 people, also left Libya and headed for Calabria.
The Lampedusa hotspot currently accommodates four times as many migrants as its capacity of 400 places.
But transfers to other reception centres on the peninsula are slowing down.
This despairs the mayor of the small island, Filippo Mannino, who has written to Pope Francis to express his pain and bitterness at the recent deadly shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
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Read on on the same topics:
- International migration
- Italy