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ABOARD THE GEO BARENTS: A nonprofit rescue ship working off the coast of Libya saved 258 migrants in two separate operations within the early hours of Friday morning.
The primary of the 2 rescues concerned a 7-meter (23-foot) -long wood boat full of 162 migrants, together with 17 ladies and 29 minors, a lot of them in a cramped space under the deck.
The boat had an engine however no system of navigation on it, in line with Flavia Conte, rescue coordinator for the Docs With out Borders rescue ship Geo Barents.
The group had spent hours at sea with the boat low within the water. The migrants on board have been Syrians and Egyptians.
“A lot of them have been under deck, within the stomach of the boat, a spot that’s much more unsafe so far as air flow is anxious and the Geo Barents has discovered individuals who have died on this a part of boats,” Conte informed The Related Press.
The second rescue concerned 96 folks on an identical wood boat, together with 9 youngsters, primarily Syrians.
The Italian Maritime Authority has informed the Geo Barents to take the rescued folks to the port of Salerno, close to Naples, 400 kilometers (250 miles) from their present location, in line with Conte.
She mentioned the assigning of a far-off port retains rescue ships out of the world the place they’re wanted for lengthy intervals of time. “It means to have in all probability extra folks crossing in a really unsafe approach of and even dying or disappearing or being intercepted after which introduced again to Libya.”
In a current assertion, the help group denounced “the scandalous inaction of the governments that sentence to loss of life hundreds of individuals yearly.”
Based on Italian Inside Ministry statistics, as of Oct. 6, practically 136,000 folks had arrived in Italy this yr, in contrast with 72,000 in the identical interval in 2023.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who has vowed to take “extraordinary measures” to cope with the surging flux of migrants, is in Granada, Spain, for a summit the place she has been discussing migration with different European leaders, pushing for extra assist from different nations as Italy struggles to deal with the arrivals.
AP
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