In the harbor in front of the commercial port of Augusta, in the Syracuse area, the ResQ People, the humanitarian ship of the newly born Italian NGO of the same name which in recent days has rescued 166 people, including women and children, in the central Mediterranean. The NGO, and from board the same ship also Cecilia Strada who is in the team of rescuers, had repeatedly requested that she be granted the “Pos”, the safe harbor, and this evening the indication of the Sicilian port arrived from the Viminale, where, however, the landing operations should begin only tomorrow morning. The news was given by the NGO itself with a tweet. The ship had already been sailing off eastern Sicily for a couple of days, even if just outside the territorial waters.
On the other hand, the other humanitarian ship that has rescued several boats of migrants in recent days is still waiting: the Geo Barents of Doctors Without Borders. There are 322 people on board. The ship is located southeast of Lampedusa. Even today the island has registered the autonomous arrival of several migrant boats. In the evening there were seven, for a total of about 120 people in addition to the more than 600 who are in the hotspot of the Imbriacola district. Two groups of about a hundred migrants each left the island today, transferred to Sicily by scheduled ferries.
A landing today also took place in Roccella Ionica, in Calabria: 136 people were on a boat intercepted just offshore by the Financial Police and escorted to the port.
At sea, on the other hand, there is a boat with 12 people that is adrift in the Sar, search and rescue area, under the jurisdiction of Malta. The request for help was made today by Alarm Phone. Other migrants were brought back. In particular, there is news of a group of 396 people on several boats that the Tunisian Coast Guard reached in the night and brought back to the African country.