Rescued migrants onboard Spanish NGO rescue vessel Aita Mari could finally go ashore at the southern Italian port city of Messina on Friday. The vessel had picked up 158 migrants several days earlier. In a separate development, the Maltese coast guard on Thursday and Friday picked up some 160 people from three boats; there were allegations that officials had waited for 18 hours before taking any action.
Spanish police announced on February 3 they had arrested 26 suspected smugglers. The group is thought to have brought more than 900 migrants from Algeria to Spain during 2019, earning at least €1.5 million.
The rescue organization Sea-Watch says Turkey has breached human rights by handing over a group of 30 migrants to the Libyan Coast Guard in the Mediterranean.
Boats operated by non-profit groups have saved over 600 migrants in the Mediterranean within a week. Now, the 403 migrants rescued by the Ocean Viking have disembarked in Italy. Meanwhile, navy boats brought 77 migrants from the vessel Alan Kurdi to Malta.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is visiting Istanbul to talk with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Migration is the main focus of their talk -- from the future of the EU-Turkey migration deal to dealing with events in Libya.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR has published a series of "ambitious but achievable" recommendations for the Croatian and German presidencies of the EU Council to make 2020 "the year of change for robust refugee protection," according to a statement published on January 9.
A series of five memorial "stumbling stones" have been placed at five schools in Rome in memory of a 14-year-old Malian student who died on a boat in the Mediterranean with his report card sewn into his pocket.
The Spanish coastguard reported four migrants dead and 16 more missing on Wednesday, November 27, after an attempt to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe failed. The migrants were traveling on a small raft that sank near the Spanish enclave Melilla.
The organizations Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee are appealing once again to European governments to stop obstructing migrant search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Even as a migrant rescue ship disembarks 88 asylum-seekers in an Italian port, a UN official says the Mediterranean isn't the most dangerous place for migrants. Many more die trying to reach the coast than in the sea.
An Italian parliamentary committee that monitors the Schengen system visited the island of Lampedusa. It found that the migrant hotspot on the island is on the verge of collapse.
The Mediterranean crossing continues to be the deadliest migrant route worldwide: 19,000 migrants have been reported dead or missing since October 3, 2013. So far this year, the crossing has claimed over 1,000 victims.