The number of migrants reaching the southern Italy is reaching new records. Over the weekend, a total of 5,573 people were reported to have made their way to the EU territory. Many fear the beginnings of another migration crisis.
The UN refugee agency said that 326 people have died or gone missing in the attempt to reach Greece via the Eastern Mediterranean from Turkey and other states in 2022. That's nearly three times as many as in 2021.
The Canary Islands, located roughly 100 kilometers off the coast of Africa, have seen a large influx of migrants arriving by boat in recent years. On this week’s show, we hear from people who’ve made the harrowing journey, and those who are trying to help them start a new life.
Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino has told Turin daily La Stampa in an interview that the island needs aid from the government after registering nearly 3,000 migrant arrivals in the first days of January. If the current trend continues, up to 180,000 people could land on the island in 2023, twice as many as last year, Mannino said.
While migrant landings are slowing down due to adverse meteorological conditions, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has met with her government with the aim of forging agreements with countries of departure of migrants.
Italy's interior minister has denied that political considerations play a part in the assigning of a port for NGO migrant rescue ships to disembark those on board as number of arrivals surges.
A two-year-old girl from the Ivory Coast has died in a shipwreck some 10 miles south of Lampedusa. She had departed from Sfax, in Tunisia, with her mother and dozens of other migrants. Meanwhile, two migrant rescue vessels are expected in the port of Livorno.
Some of the 261 migrants who reached the Puglia port city of Bari on Sunday, December 11, were in poor health and needed to be hospitalized. A nurse on board the rescue vessel Humanity 1 said a few passengers rescued off Libya's coast were in "terrible medical conditions".
Italy's prime minister has once again spoken about immigration in an interview to the newspaper Corriere della Sera, adding that she will not withdraw a defamation complaint against writer and journalist Roberto Saviano.
European interior ministers on Friday welcomed an EU plan to better coordinate the handling of migrant arrivals after a furious row over a private rescue ship erupted between Italy and France.
The Italian island of Lampedusa saw the arrival of more than 700 migrants and refugees on Wednesday and Thursday. Over 1,300 people are now staying at local hotspots, built for just 350. A baby was found dead on a boat that crossed from Tunisia.
Five boats carrying 72 migrants independently reached Mallorca and neighboring islands on Wednesday. The arrival of migrant boats on Spain's Balearic Islands is rare, but numbers have increased in recent years.