The Coast Guard is intervening to rescue around 1,300 people on boats who are trying to reach Italy.
Three patrol boats are operating about 70 miles south of Crotone to rescue a boat with about 500 migrants on board.
Other units of the Coast Guard - Nave Dattilo and 3 further patrol boats - are providing assistance to two other boats with a total of about 800 migrants on board which are, instead, about 100 miles from Roccella Ionica.
The rescue operations, coordinated by the Rome Coast Guard Operations Center in an area under Italian responsibility, are particularly complex due to the large number of people on board the adrift boats.
Operations will continue in the next few hours also with the use of an ATR 42 aircraft,
"The Coast Guard in difficulty in the Italian Sar area, south-west of eastern Sicily and south-west of the Ionian Sea, during interventions within its competence, asked for support from the Navy. The immediate intervention of Nave Sirio, already present in the area for its operational activities, to integrate the Coast Guard vehicles currently engaged on the scene of the action. The military ship is proceeding at the maximum speed allowed to provide the requested assistance".
So the Ministry of Defense.
Over 480 migrants were rescued at sea by the Diciotti ship, while it was en route to Lampedusa to transfer hundreds of guests from the hotspot.
The Coast Guard boat subsequently arrived at the Pelagie island where it took on board 188 people who were in the structure in the Imbriacola district, where there are 2,700 refugees out of the 400 places officially available.
In Lampedusa, meanwhile, the landings continue.
Another 188 migrants arrived with three different boats: 38, including 13 women, were on a 7-meter small boat that landed in Cala Galera.
The central Mediterranean was the most active route in the first two months of this year for irregular arrivals of migrants, with almost 12,000 crossings, double compared to a year ago (+116%).
In February alone, the number of detections on this route tripled from a year ago, reaching 7,000.
Frontex reports this in its bulletin.
More generally, irregular entries into the EU were stable, settling at 28,130 in the first two months of the year and 13,800 in February alone, slightly above last year, explains Frontex.
Around two-fifths of the entries into the EU of people mostly from Syria, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Afghanistan, Pakistan are recorded along the Central Mediterranean route.
Arrivals from the Western Balkans are down, thanks to the
alignment of Serbia's visa policy with EU requirements.
However, it remains the second most active migratory route to the European Union, with almost 8,400 detections (-28% compared to January-February 2022), adds Frontex.
Surge in landings in the last 3 days (until 8 this morning): there are 3 thousand, to which will be added those who will arrive after the rescue operations of the Coast Guard underway today in the Ionian Sea.
And the total for 2023 rises to 17,592 against 5,976 in the same period last year: the increase is 194%.
This is what emerges from the data from the Interior Ministry.
Ivorians (2,383), Guineans (2,334), Bengalis (1,506) and Tunisians (1,286) were the most represented nationalities.
There are 1,965 unaccompanied minors.
Meanwhile, a Coast Guard patrol boat, the CP325, has set sail from Pozzallo for a sea rescue operation of migrants reported about 130 miles from the port of Ragusa.
It could be the boat with about 500 people on board reported by Alarm Phone, the telephone service that receives requests for assistance in the Mediterranean. The prefectures of Ragusa, Syracuse, Catania and Messina would have been pre-alerted for the reception.
According to what has been learned, around 150 could land in Pozzallo in the evening
."Alarm Phone is in contact with about
500 people on a boat that left #Libya
, it called us from the Italian SAR area. We have alerted the competent authorities. Don't waste time: send help immediately!".
She writes it on Twitter Alarm Phone.
On board the trawler there is a "situation of serious danger" says the head of mission of Mediterranea Saving Humans:
"Between 9 and 10 this morning the Frontex Eagle 1 aircraft flew over the position of the boat and the same did a US Navy helicopter".
Mediterranea requests that a rescue operation be launched immediately.
"There isn't a minute to lose. MRCC Rome has had all the information for several hours. And for the avoidance of doubt, this is a distressing situation, it's not a police operation that's needed, it's a fishing boat full of refugees on the run, asking for help, there are dozens of women and children and from on board they report that they are already taking on water".
For this reason, "we ask that they please send the patrol boats and aircraft of the Coast Guard to open a Sar event".
THE SEA RETURNS ANOTHER BODY IN CUTRO
The body of another minor victim of the sinking of the boat loaded with migrants on 26 February in Steccato di Cutro was found.
It concerns a boy of about six who was lying on the shoreline, where he had been brought by the sea.
The body was found by some citizens, who warned the Coast Guard.
He is the 73rd confirmed victim of the shipwreck, the 29th minor and the twentieth in the age group between 0 and 12 years.
SHIPWRECK IN LAMPEDUSA
Once again, tragedy risked off the coast of Lampedusa:
a small boat with 42 migrants, including 5 women and 1 minor, was shipwrecked
late yesterday evening in Italian Sar waters.
The crew of a Tunisian fishing boat provided first aid.
When the Coast Guard soldiers picked up the SOS and recovered the survivors, the small boat had already sunk.
Several migrants, originally from the Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Nigeria, were taken to the clinic because they were suffering from severe hypothermia.
The survivors said there are no people missing and that they left Sfax, Tunisia, last Wednesday.
"It was not a tragedy announced, but a tragedy denounced
. I think it is hypocritical to say it was not possible to give an answer.... No, we were unable or unwilling to anticipate. In the Church, starting with Pope Francis, many have underlined a thousand times: there is no surprise in these events, they are foreseen and very political things. In addition to being very sad".
Thus Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development and close collaborator of Pope Francis
, responds in an interview with Vatican News on the tragic shipwreck of migrants in Cutro, in the Crotone area.
ANSA agency
Council of Ministers in Cutro.
Meloni: "We have not turned around. We will fight the traffickers" - Politics
The council of ministers met at the site of the shipwreck and approved a decree law which 'introduces a new type of crime for those who cause death or serious injury through the trafficking of persons which provides for a sentence of up to 30 years' imprisonment.
Soft toys against cars: the protest (PHOTO) (ANSA)
41 ARRIVALS IN ONE DAY, A RECORD
A total of 1,869 migrants arrived in Lampedusa yesterday, with 41 boats rescued in the waters off the island or in the Sar area by Coast Guard and Finance Police patrol boats.
A record never achieved before.
Two small boats, carrying 46 and 41 migrants, managed to land directly on land between Guitgia beach and a nearby cove.
Since midnight, another 14 landings have been recorded, with around 605 migrants.
At the contrada Imbriacola hotspot, from where 750 guests were transferred yesterday, there are currently over 3,000 migrants.
ANSA agency
The word of the week: to migrate - Chronicle
Massimo Sebastiani's podcast (ANSA)
INTERVENTIONS IN TUNISIA
The Tunisian Coast Guard has blocked
42 attempts at irregular migration in the last 36 hours (until 6 pm on 9 March), rescuing 1,509 people aboard boats in difficulty off the territorial waters.
This was announced by the spokesman of the Tunis National Guard on Facebook, specifying that as many as 28 departures were blocked yesterday alone.
Of the 1,509 migrants rescued, 1,488 were found to be from various sub-Saharan African countries and 21 from Tunisia.
In the shipwreck off the coast of Sfax yesterday recovered 14 bodies of people from different countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
During the operations, the agents seized over 30 naval engines and a significant number of iron boats, the note continues.
A SHIP IN BRINDISI
Meanwhile,
the Emergency ship entered the port of Brindisi
Life Support, which on the night between 6 and 7 March last rescued 105 migrants on a broken rubber boat in international waters off Libya.
Among them are 59 men, 16 women - one of whom is seven months pregnant - 24 unaccompanied minors and 6 accompanied minors.
The youngest is 2 years old.
They come from many African countries.
The boat they were traveling on, a 12-metre dinghy that was taking on water and was at the mercy of the waves because it had run out of petrol, left Zwara, Libya, at 2 in the afternoon on 6 March.
According to reports from the commander, Domenico Pugliese, all the rescued people are in good condition, even if many of them "bear signs of the time spent in Libya on their bodies".
ANSA agency
Migrants: Emergency ship with 105 on board arrived in Brindisi - Puglia
The Emergency Life Support ship entered the port of Brindisi, which on the night between 6 and 7 March last rescued 105 migrants on a dinghy in distress in international waters off Libya.
(HANDLE)