Opposition politicians on
Thursday slammed Frontex Plus, the EU-led migrant search and
rescue programme that is to replace Italy's Mare Nostrum
operation in November.
"The operation dreamt up by (Interior Minister Angelino)
Alfano and (EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia) Malmstrom is
the usual rip-off," said Deputy Senate speaker Roberto Calderoli
of the anti-immigrant Northern League, the day after Alfano
announced that Mare Nostrum would be replaced by an expanded
version of European Union border control agency Frontex.
Party colleague Nicola Molteni likewise called the new
programme a "bluff" and a "farce" that would "continue to claim
lives and cause thousands of illegal immigrants to arrive each
day under a different name".
Italy set up Mare Nostrum in October 2013 after 400 people
perished in two migrant boat disasters off the coast of Sicily.
However, in recent months the country has been calling for
the EU to shoulder some of the burden of dealing with the influx
of immigrants to Europe from war-torn north Africa and the
Middle East, whose numbers have increased sharply since the
start of the year.
Meanwhile seven Egyptian nationals were detained in Sicily
on Wednesday night on suspicion of trafficking 442 migrants to
Italy, including around 100 Palestinians fleeing fighting in
Gaza.
They arrived in Pozzallo on board a freighter after being
rescued in the Sicily Channel.
Investigators say the hazardous journey earned the
traffickers around one million dollars.
Separately, the Sicilian coast guard on Wednesday found an
empty boat with Arabic on the side caught in rocks off the
Agrigento coast.
So far a police land search for the presumed migrant
occupants has been unsuccessful.
And on Thursday 407 migrants almost all of declared Syrian
nationality arrived in the port of Brindisi in the southern
Puglia region after being rescued off the coast of Libya.
A further 225 Syrian refugees were due to arrive in the
Sicilian capital Palermo on Friday morning.
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