The private aid organization Doctors Without Borders brought 48 boat migrants ashore in the central Italian city of Ancona. The ship reached the port on Friday afternoon after a day-long crossing, the organization said. They were rescued from distress on Monday in the central Mediterranean near the Libyan coast and brought on board the “Geo Barents”. According to the information, nine minors were among them.
The Italian authorities assigned the ship to the port of Ancona on the Adriatic coast shortly after picking up the migrants – far from the location of the rescue operation.
The French aid organization SOS Méditerranée also rescued 84 migrants – including 58 unaccompanied minors – from the Mediterranean Sea in international waters last Tuesday. As the organization announced, the “Ocean Viking” was assigned the port of the northern Italian city of Ravenna. Your arrival there is expected at the weekend.
The right-wing government in Rome passed a decree in December that is intended to severely limit the use of civilian sea rescuers. The bill passed the first Italian chamber of parliament on Wednesday. The UN human rights commissioner Volker Türk meanwhile criticized the government’s plan in a letter on Thursday. The law is the wrong way to deal with this humanitarian crisis. It hinders sea rescue and could lead to more deaths in the Mediterranean, it said.
