More than 1,000 migrants have landed in Italy in the last few hours

More than a thousand migrants have disembarked in Italy in the last few hours and hundreds more, rescued by aid ships, are searching for a port of reception, Italian authorities and non-governmental organizations announced today.

More than 600 people who tried to cross the Mediterranean in a fishing boat that ran aground were rescued by a merchant ship and the coast guard off Calabria, southern Italy. They were transported to Sicilian ports.

The authorities report that five dead were pulled from the sea.

On the island of Lampedusa, around 522 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia arrived overnight by boat from Tunisia and Libya.

According to Italian media, the reception center in Lampedusa, with a capacity of 250-300 people, has been overwhelmed, housing 1,200.

In the meantime, non-governmental organization boats are still pulling people from the sea.

The organization SeaWatch announced that it carried out four rescue operations yesterday. “On board the SeaWatch3 we have 428 people, including women and children, a woman who is 9 months pregnant and a patient with severe burns, according to a post by the NGO on Twitter.

The SOS Méditerranée vessel OceanViking has announced that it has rescued 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied children, who were crammed into an inflatable dinghy drifting unruly in international waters off Libya.

From January 1 to July 22, 34,000 people have reached Italy by sea, compared to 25,500 in the same period last year and 10,900 in 2020, according to Italy’s interior ministry.

The sea migration route of the central Mediterranean is the most dangerous in the world. The International Organization for Migration estimates that since the beginning of the year, 990 people have gone missing in the central Mediterranean.

Source: AMPE