Still dead in the sea of ​​Sicily, on a day marked by several landings with women and children, in Lampedusa and on the Calabrian coasts, and by four rescues off Libya of the Ocean Viking , the ship of the French NGO Sos Mediterranee, which now has a total of 228 people .
Ending in tragedy was yet another landing of migrants this morning in Lampedusa: 18 people landed on the island, but 21 were traveling on the makeshift boat. Three are missing,it is a Somali woman and two Ivorian men. According to the story of those rescued, the small boat, which left Abu Kammash in Libya last Friday, collided with a Libyan motor trawler while it was in international waters. Five of them would end up in the water and only two would be able to get back on board the sea cart.
The men of the Port Authority intercepted the boat at the entrance to the port. Around 10 o’clock the migrants on board, 18 in all, disembarked at the Favaloro pier. Among them also four women. Rescuers were told to come from South Sudan, Somalia, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast and Mali. For the two migrants who ended up at sea together with the three missing, it was necessary to be transferred to the island’s outpatient clinic.
The police – who immediately informed the Agrigento prosecutor’s office of the affair – were all told that they had left Aboukammash in Libya last Friday evening. And they reported that the ramming was unintentional, meaning that it was an accident . Who was driving their boat, a 4 and a half meter dinghy, was turning towards the Libyan fishing boat to ask for help but would have approached too quickly, hence the collision that caused the five migrants to fall into the sea.
For Lampedusa it was the umpteenth day of landings. Before the survivors of the ramming, the Coast Guard rescued another 62 migrants aboard a 12-meter boat that left Zuara, Libya last night. They are all Egyptians and among them there is also a minor. Another small boat had also left Libya and was rescued by a patrol boat of the Yellow Flames. On board eighteen Sudanese, Eritrean, Bengali and Egyptian migrants, who, after an initial medical triage on the Favarolo pier, were taken to the hotspot in the Imbriacola district.
Shortly before, 171 migrants had been transferred from the hotspot to board the Splendid quarantine ship. A measure ordered by the Prefecture of Agrigento, in agreement with the Interior Ministry to prevent the structure – where more than 200 people remain – from becoming saturated. This is the effect of the intensification of arrivals in recent days: seven boats on Saturday and five on Friday , which in two days brought almost 600 people to the island .
Also at dawn this morning, another 122 migrants disembarked in Roccella Jonica(Reggio Calabria), following an articulated rescue operation carried out by the Guardia di Finanza a few tens of miles off the coast of Riace. This is the third landing in these first 45 days of the new year. Among the refugees, mostly of Afghan and Syrian nationality, there are also several women and a dozen children. Many minors, many of them unaccompanied. After disembarking in the Port of Roccella, the 122 refugees were subjected to the molecular swab test. Subsequently, the migrants were temporarily placed in a recently built tensile structure inside the Roccellese port and managed by the volunteers of the Red Cross and Civil Protection.
