The bodies of eight migrants, including a pregnant woman, were found aboard a boat rescued in the Mediterranean by the Italian coast guard, Filippo Mannino, mayor of the island of Lampedusa, announced on Friday to AFP.
The Coast Guard recovered Thursday evening February 2 “
eight bodies, five men and three women, one of whom was pregnant.
There are 42 survivors, including two pregnant women
,” Filippo Mannino said.
"
I've lost count of the dead.
I have been mayor for six months and I have already received at least 40 deaths.
This is not normal, almost every week we recover corpses
,” he lamented.
Italy, gateway to Europe
The island of Lampedusa is a rock of 20 km² located about a hundred kilometers east of the Tunisian coast, in the heart of the Mediterranean and represents the first gateway to Europe for migrants arriving from North Africa.
Italy has been one of the main gateways for immigration by sea from Africa to Europe for years, with a record 180,000 arrivals in 2016.
Read alsoThe management of migrants opens a violent crisis between France and Italy
In 2022, around 105,000 migrants arrived in Italy and nearly 5,000 since the start of the year, a figure up sharply compared to the same period of the two previous years, indicates the website of the Ministry of the Interior .
The subject of immigration and the management of migrant flows will be on the agenda of the next extraordinary summit of the European Union scheduled for February 9 and 10.
“
The situation is getting really dramatic.
Europe must do something, the government must do something
”, underlined the mayor of Lampedusa.
New Italian law
Italy, led since October by the right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni, is fighting by all means against the arrival of migrants and has insisted on putting this topic on the agenda of the summit to seek greater support from other EU countries.
Rome hopes in particular to obtain an automatic redistribution of migrants arriving on its territory, an idea which comes up against strong resistance from many EU countries.
In an attempt to at least curb arrivals, the government adopted in early January a new, restrictive law on the activities of NGOs that rescue immigrants at sea.
Read alsoMigrants: the question of hosting the Ocean Viking embarrasses the executive
The ships of these NGOs must therefore inform the Italian authorities as soon as they have rescued a boat and the latter then decide on the port where survivors and rescuers must dock.
It is quite often a distant port from the site of the rescue operation.
In this way, the NGOs cannot rescue several boats in several operations and waste a lot of time going to the assigned ports and returning to the high seas. This law has also been criticized by several bodies of the Council of Europe.
