Libyan coast guard stops boat

(ANSA) - Cairo, July 17 - The Libyan coast guard on Monday stopped a migrant boat with 158 migrants aboard. These included 34 women and nine children, sources said.
    The boat was intercepted off the city of Khoms, the coast guard said.
    The migrants received humanitarian and medical assistance and were taken to a refugee camp at Khoms, the coast guard said.
    Libya let a woman and child aboard the drifting migrant boat die, NGO Proactiva Open Arms said Tuesday, publishing a photo of the two bodies in the sea, amid the wreckage of the boat. "The Libyan coast guard said it intercepted a boat with 158 people aboard supplying medical and humanitarian assistance," said NGO founder Oscar Camps. "But they didn't say they left two women and a child aboard and sank the ship because they didn't want to board the motor launches".
    Four migrants drowned when they jumped into the sea upon seeing Frontex ship Protector and Finance Guard ship Monte Sperone approaching off the island of Linosa at the weekend, relatives and friends told police Tuesday. For this reason the commander and the 10 migrant smugglers aboard the boat from Libya have also been charged with death as a consequence of other crimes.
    The 450 migrants including many unaccompanied minors landed at Pozzallo in Sicily Monday.
    France, Malta, Germany, Spain and Portugal have agreed to take 50 each and Ireland has said it will take 20, in the first such distribution of migrants.
    Carers are lacking due to the government's clampdown on migrants, the Sant'Egidio lay Catholic ecumenical community said Tuesday. "Carers have dropped because of the restrictions envisaged for immigrants and the halt to migrant flows," it said.
    "I raised the question with Premier (Giuseppe), Conte," said community president Marco Impagliazzo.
    Impagliazzo urged the government to issue 50,00 work visas for carers "at once" and warned that "the elderly are at risk".
    Migrant arrivals in Spain have overtaken those in Italy, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) told reporters on Tuesday. From the start of the year to July 15 some 18,106 landed on Spanish shores on the western Mediterranean route while 17,827 came to Italy on the central route from Libya, the IOM told the press. Spain's migrant emergency is meanwhile continuing with more than 892 people rescued at the weekend alone off Andalusian shores.