Italian coastguards rescue more than 670 migrants in a drifting fishing boat near Calabria

More than a thousand people have reached the Italian coast in the last few hours

24 (EUROPE PRESS)

The Italian Coast Guard has carried out a major rescue operation in recent hours to save 674 migrants who were drifting in a fishing boat off the coast of Calabria, where five people have also been identified dead.

In the operation, which occurred on Saturday 124 nautical miles from the coast, three coast guard patrols, a merchant ship, and a unit of the Guardia di Finanza, the security body of the Ministry of Economy, were involved in rescue tasks. .

The Italian coastguards came to have to remove people from the water due to the situation of the fishing boat, initially sighted by a P72A maritime patrol used by the Italian Navy, which made the first sighting, and a Frontex aircraft that followed the event.

Part of the rescued migrants have begun to be transferred this morning to the ports of Calabria and Sicily.

The Italian coastguards have stressed in their statement that the last few hours “have been especially demanding” for the Coast Guard patrol boats, which had previously rescued, along with the ‘Diciotti’ boat, other migrants who were in boats in precarious conditions navigation, without determining the exact number.

In fact, the intervention of a helicopter that departed from the Catania Coast Guard air base was necessary to carry out the medical evacuation of a woman.

MORE THAN A THOUSAND ARRIVALS

To this figure must be added another 522 people who arrived last night on the island of Lampedusa from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia in particular, aboard fifteen different boats from Tunisia and Libya.

The Lampedsa reception center, according to Italian media, is absolutely overwhelmed, with 1,200 people inside, three times more than the maximum allowed.

Meanwhile, NGOs continue to work at sea. SeaWatch has reported this Sunday of four rescue operations in the last 24 hours. “On board the SeaWatch3, we have 428 people, including women and children, a nine-month pregnant woman and a patient with severe burns,” he reported on his Twitter account.

The OceanViking, of the NGO SOS Méditerranée, has rescued 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, crammed into “an overcrowded inflatable boat in danger in international waters off Libya.”

Between January 1 and July 22, 34,000 people arrived by sea in Italy, compared to 25,500 in the same period in 2021 and 10,900 in 2020, according to the Ministry of the Interior.