There appeared to be no let-up in the
arrival of migrants and refugees by sea to Lampedusa on
Wednesday as Coast Guard rescuers recovered the bodies of two
women believed to have been among the missing after four
shipwrecks on Monday and police busted a smuggling network
allegedly organising the onward movement of sub-Saharan Africans
arriving in Italy to other parts of Europe.
Two fishing boats respectively carrying 115 and 125 migrants and
refugees arrived in Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, taking to
821 the number of people disembarking on the tiny stepping-stone
island in 15 separate landings since midnight.
The numbers are updated to 11 am local time.
The fishing vessels both departed from Zuwara in Libya and the
migrants and refugees on board were from Bangladesh, Burkina
Faso, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast,
Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and
Syria.
The other 681 arrivals made the crossing on a total of 13 much
smaller vessels that departed from Tunisia, including one group
of 62 people from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast,
Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Togo who were rescued by the coast guard
after their boat got into distress in the Italian search and
rescue (SAR) area.
In that operation the coast guard also recovered two bodies of
two women spotted in the water in the same area and transferred
them to Lampedusa.
The bodies are thought to be of two of the at least 20 people
reported missing after four separate shipwrecks off Lampedusa on
Monday that left two people confirmed dead.
The latest arrivals compounded existing pressure on the tiny
island in the Pelagie archipelago, after landings started up
again over the weekend following a brief hiatus linked to bad
weather.
Early on Wednesday there were 2,689 people in the hotspot
against a formal capacity of little under 400.
180 people were due to be transferred to mainland Sicily by
regular ferry later in the morning.
Italy is struggling to cope with a significant increase in
arrivals of migrants and refugees to its southern shores, and
Lampedusa - Italy's southernmost island and closer to north
Africa than it is to Sicily - is bearing the brunt, with
reception and transfer capacity unable to keep pace.
To date 38,988 migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy by
sea since 1 January 2023, compared to 9,673 in the same period
in 2022 and 8,918 in 2021, according to Interior Ministry
figures.
Elsewhere in Italy, a group of 40 migrants and refugees arrived
on a sail boat in the port of Crotone in Italy's southern
Calabria region on Wednesday morning after being intercepted by
Finance Police around 20 miles off the coast and tugged to shore
by the Coast Guard.
The group consisted of 35 Afghans, 2 Iranians and 3 Pakistanis
and included 8 women and an accompanied child.
They had departed from Turkey and been at sea for 5 days, of
which the last two in difficult sailing conditions.
Also on Wednesday, police in Catania executed arrest orders
against 17 foreign nationals suspected of being part of a
network that smuggled migrants arriving in Italy from
sub-Saharan Africa to other parts of the European Union.
The suspects, who are primarily from Guinea and Ivory Coast,
were charged with criminal association for the facilitation of
illegal immigration aggravated by transnationality.
"The smugglers contacted the migrants directly in Africa (Ivory
Coast, Mali, Morocco, Libya) and took them to the European
country of choice for a payment of more than 1,000 euros," said
Police Central Anti-Crime Director, Prefect Francesco Messina.
Separately, French Premier Elisabeth Borne said that Pariswould
be boosting its border police presence along its southern border
with Italy by deploying 150 additional officers "next week".
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