CORRESPONDENT FROM CATANIA. “We have asked for a port for the 475 shipwrecked aboard Sea Watch 4. While Malta does not answer us, Italy has refused. International law stipulates that people rescued at sea must be taken to the nearest safe harbor. We ask the authorities to respect it ». Now the wait at sea for a “Pos”, a safe harbor, or at least a landing port, is for the Sea Watch 4, the larger of the two ships of the German NGO, which from last Thursday to Sunday carried out seven rescue operations in the central Mediterranean, between the SAR areas of Libya and Malta. Among the 475 migrants on board, there are 143 unaccompanied minors but also very young children: two 3-month-old twins, a one-year-old, and a 4-year-old. Of the 55 women on the humanitarian ship, 16 are pregnant. After the seven rescue operations, there were 482 people on the ship but yesterday a medical evacuation by the Italian Coast Guard was carried out of a mother and daughter born just a few hours earlier on the last of the rescued boats. A pregnant woman with her 2-year-old son and an injured man with his wife and child were also brought ashore.
The Sea Watch 4 currently sails within the Italian territorial waters, south of Sicily, in front of the Agrigento coasts.
Even today, a few dozen migrants have arrived autonomously in Lampedusa but in the meantime the prefecture of Agrigento has started the transfers from the hotspot in the Imbriacola district to Sicily with the scheduled ferries.
The dangerous crossings still take victims. While on the beaches of Libya, as Safa Msehli of the IOM has announced, the first bodies of the shipwreck last week arrive in which at least 75 people would have drowned, another tragedy would have taken place on the route from West Africa to the Canary Islands. Moroccan authorities rescued some migarts after a freighter reported the presence of a boat adrift. According to the Alarm Phone, there are 20 survivors but about ten people would be missing.
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