900 thousand on the way. “It will be dramatic”

The forecasts for spring and summer are dramatic: the risk is that with good weather, a wave of 900,000 migrants will leave Tunisia within a few months – with a peak in August – which would throw the system of reception, especially in Lampedusa, already collapsing.

Migrants, why so many boats in the Ionian Sea? Increasingly dangerous land route, that’s what’s happening

The alarm also comes from the Minister of Sea Policies, the Sicilian Nello Musumeci: «You don’t know what will happen in a few months, you have no idea. In this land of Sicily we all know what we had to do with the illegal landing of migrants. Either Europe realizes that we have reached zero point, or we will be forced to mourn yet more deaths because the countries of departure do not say what happens to their compatriots. People are convinced that by paying the mafiosi and getting on the rafts they will be able to reach Eldorado. And it’s not like that.” The situation seems destined to explode: it is not only the crisis in Tunisia that is worrying, but also the Turkish and Lebanese routes.

DEPARTURES BOOM
There is a boom in departures to Italy: in the last 48 hours there have been almost five thousand. The more favorable weather conditions in view of spring will cause the numbers that are already worrying the Interior Ministry to soar: arrivals in 2023 are at an altitude of 18,800, a very clear increase compared to the last two years. In the same period, in 2021 and 2022, there were about six thousand. Only a share between 5 and 10% would be entitled to asylum depending on the country of departure. The Frontex data then record the surge in flows in the central Mediterranean: an estimated +116%. This route – mainly from Libya and Tunisia – continues to be the most traveled and the situation is destined to deteriorate further. The serious economic crisis in Tunisia, combined with the recent statements by President Kais Saied – who called for “urgent measures against illegal immigration” of sub-Saharan Africans – has caused a surge in departures to Italy.

The Tunis coastguard spoke of 25 illegal migration operations foiled in the last two days and 1,008 people rescued at sea, 954 of whom came from sub-Saharan African countries. Yesterday it rescued another 326 migrants off its territorial waters. Meanwhile in Italy there were over 1,200 migrants rescued by the Coast Guard between Friday and yesterday, in the Ionian Sea. They were aboard two boats intercepted over 100 miles off the coast of Roccella Ionica. The Dattilo ship on Friday saved all the migrants present on one of the two boats. On the second boat there were another 379 refugees, who were rescued by two Coast Guard patrol boats and then transferred aboard the Sirio ship of the Navy, which headed for Augusta. The reception and identification procedures were coordinated by the prefecture of Syracuse. In the night between Friday and Saturday, however, the Coast Guard and the Guardia di Finanza rescued the migrants aboard a fishing boat intercepted sixty miles from Crotone: they were 487, crowded together and in very bad conditions, missing in a force 6 sea. board were transferred to the reception center of Isola di Capo Rizzuto. Meanwhile, the Dattilo is docked in the port of Reggio Calabria with 584 people on board: among them 70 women and children. Some were taken to the Boccioni school in Gallico, on the northern outskirts of Reggio, where a very first reception center has been set up. The others were instead transferred to the Cedir, in the former premises of the Civil Protection. In the meantime, four alleged smugglers who allegedly organized departures from Tunisia were arrested in Trapani.

THE ALERT
At dawn Alarm Phone raised a new alarm: 47 people adrift on a boat coming from Libya. The NGO Sea Watch said that a passing merchant vessel was asked by the operations room of the IMRCC Rome (the National Maritime Rescue Coordination Center) to monitor the dinghy while awaiting the arrival of the Libyan Coast Guard patrol boats. «Sea-bird sighted the vessel in contact with Alarm phone. She is dangerously overcrowded and among scary waves. Near it there is a merchant ship that has received an order from the Rome Relief Coordination Center to coordinate with the Libyan coast guard,” the German NGO wrote on Twitter. Meanwhile, efforts have begun to decongest the Lampedusa hotspot, which is even more overcrowded after the landings in recent days. The C-130s of the Italian Air Force carried out the transfers: 70 people were taken to Pratica Mare, in Piedmont and Lombardy. “The relief efforts that our Navy is carrying out in these hours and the transfers carried out by the Air Force are yet another demonstration of the extremely high professionalism and generosity of our Armed Forces,” commented Defense Minister Guido Crosetto.

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