Italy is testing the 180 migrants rescued by the aid ship Ocean Viking in the Mediterranean with a view to transporting them on board a quarantine vessel in Sicily.
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Members of a medical team dispatched by the authorities to the Sicilian port of Pozzallo "have established the absence of specific health problems and have also reported that the tensions recorded on the boat (from the NGO SOS Mediterranean) are on the way to 'be appeased ,' a source in the interior ministry said on Saturday. The medical team is currently testing the migrants to find out if they are infected with the new coronavirus, after which they will be transferred to a quarantine vessel currently located in Porto Empedocle, on the southern coast of Sicily. "The situation is being carefully monitored with a view to the transhipment of migrants, scheduled for Monday, July 6, on the Moby Zaza", according to the same source.
Brawls, suicide attempts, physical threats to the crew: the tension had become such on board that the humanitarian ship had declared itself Friday in "state of emergency", a first. Since Thursday, several fights had broken out, mainly between ethnic groups, and six suicide attempts had been recorded. It has been more than a week since the ship made its first request to allocate a port to disembark these people, but after several requests to the Italian and Maltese authorities - one of the rescues was carried out on the waters dependent on these two countries, while the other three were in those of Malta -, the Ocean Viking had so far received only negative responses from the two countries.
The 180 migrants, including Pakistanis, North Africans, Eritreans and Nigerians, were rescued by the SOS Mediterranean ship during four separate operations, on June 25 and 30. 25 of them are minors.
