As a result of new amendments to Italy’s security decree, fines up to one million euros could be imposed on private rescue organizations who attempt to disembark rescued migrants in Italy or defy refusals to enter Italian waters. The latest amendments were passed into law by Italy’s upper house, the Senate, on Monday, August 5.
The Marella Discovery picked up 111 migrants, including 33 children, near Greece's Peloponnese peninsula. Despite a large fall in migrants crossing the Mediterranean, six people die each day making the journey.
Seven migrants accused of aiding and abetting clandestine migration and multiple homicide were acquitted by the Palermo Court of Assizes. The case was over their role in the August 2015 shipwreck in which at least 56 people lost their lives.
Some commercial ships that have rescued people in danger have lied about their destination, according to a telephone hotline that helps migrants lost at sea. Alarm Phone says the crews of several ships led migrants to believe they would be dropped off in Europe, but instead returned them to Libya.
The photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi's lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world in 2015. A German rescue organization has now named a ship after the toddler.
The death toll from a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Barbate, Cadiz, has climbed to 18 after five bodies were recovered last night near Los Caños de Meca. A total of 22 people have been rescued, while an estimated six others remain missing.
The Sarost 5 with 40 migrants onboard and stuck at sea for the past two weeks will be able to land in Tunisia, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed announced on Sunday. In the meantime, the Spanish NGO Open Arms who returned to within a few miles of the ship to offer assistance has left the area.
Italy is impounding a Dutch-flagged migrant rescue ship after the Netherlands denied responsibility for the vessel. It is operated by German NGO Mission Lifeline.