Tragic Easter weekend in the waters of the Mediterranean, where reports of damaged boats and migrants seeking help intensified, with a crescendo of rescuers' activity which from Friday to Monday allowed about 2,000 people to be rescued another 1,200 migrants have joined for whom rescue operations are still underway in the Ionian Sea between Sicily and Calabria.
Thirty-eight are instead the victims of two shipwrecks, one off the coast of Tunisia and the other in Maltese waters, and 18 are missing.
About 2,000 people rescued by the Coast Guard since Friday
Just the two rescues on Easter Monday were the most complex, since they involved about one thousand and two hundred people.
The Coast Guard intervened to rescue two large boats: a fishing boat with 800 migrants on board, located over 120 miles south-east of Syracuse, and another vessel with 400 on board in the Italian Sar area 170 miles south- East of Capo Passero, reported by Alarm Phone which had raised the alarm since Easter day.
The rescue operations south-east of Syracuse were coordinated by Nave Peluso with the support of three Sar class 300 patrol boats and the assistance of a merchant ship present in the area;
the intervention southeast of Capo Passero was instead managed by Nave Diciotti with the help of two merchant vessels for assistance.
Lampedusa, 26 landings on Easter day
After the respite granted by the bad weather, the departures of migrants towards the Italian coasts have therefore resumed at full speed, as demonstrated by the over 40 small boats that have arrived in Lampedusa in the last three days, for a total of almost two thousand people.
Among them were also the survivors of a shipwreck in Maltese waters which, according to witnesses, would have caused the death of at least 18 migrants, currently still missing.
To these must be added the 35 victims of Saturday's shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, present on a sea cart together with 15 other migrants who, however, were saved.
Victims to which are added the corpse of a Nigerian who was on a 7-metre small boat, with 38 migrants, rescued on Sunday off Lampedusa by the Coast Guard, and two other bodies recovered at sea and brought to Lampedusa by the NGO Resqship,
along with the 22 survivors.
Two small boats with a total of 43 migrants were instead blocked by the Tunis Coast Guard off the coasts of Monastir and Nabeul.
Numbers that have brought the island's hotspot to collapse again.
The Contrata Imbriacola facility currently hosts about 1,800 people, four times more than its maximum capacity.
And, as if that weren't enough, the buses used to transfer migrants from the pier to the Center and from the very first reception facility to the port where the transfers with the line ferries take place have also ended up in the spotlight: they would not be suitable and would suffer continuous slowdowns , so much so that the Agrigento police station has launched a series of checks on both the vehicles and those who manage them.
Among the 1,800 guests of the Center there are also the twenty-two survivors,
including 9 women, of the shipwreck that occurred in the night between Saturday and Sunday in Maltese Sar waters.
A tragedy on which the Agrigento prosecutor's office has also opened an investigation, which is investigating aiding and abetting illegal immigration and death as a consequence of another crime.
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
of the shipwreck that occurred in the night between Saturday and Sunday in Maltese Sar waters.
A tragedy on which the Agrigento prosecutor's office has also opened an investigation, which is investigating aiding and abetting illegal immigration and death as a consequence of another crime.
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
of the shipwreck that occurred in the night between Saturday and Sunday in Maltese Sar waters.
A tragedy on which the Agrigento prosecutor's office has also opened an investigation, which is investigating aiding and abetting illegal immigration and death as a consequence of another crime.
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
the Agrigento prosecutor's office is also investigating, investigating aiding and abetting illegal immigration and death as a result of another crime.
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
the Agrigento prosecutor's office is also investigating, investigating aiding and abetting illegal immigration and death as a result of another crime.
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
The survivors will be listened to by the Flying Squad agents who will try to reconstruct what happened.
They had left Sfax and when the boat sank, the migrants remained in the water for at least a couple of hours before being rescued by the NGO Resqship ship Nadir.
An "unspeakable tragedy - attacks the German NGO - which could have, and should have, been avoided with a humanitarian approach to migration instead of securing European borders".
