Italy: Coast guard rescues 1,400 migrants off southern Italy

Rome: The Italian coast guard says it has rescued more than 1,400 migrants from overcrowded boats including a sailboat off the coast of southern Italy. Four separate rescue operations reportedly took place in the Mediterranean earlier this week.

According to a coast guard statement, 47 migrants were aboard the sailboat, which was in distress off the Italian region of Calabria. The passengers, among them two children in urgent need of medical care, were rescued by a coast guard vessel early Tuesday (June 6).

The rescue operations began in the night between Monday and Tuesday and ended in the wee hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast. One coast guard vessel reportedly picked up some 1,240 migrants from two fishing boats.

A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police helped a fourth vessel, which carried 130 migrants.

Wednesday’s statement by the coast guard reportedly said that it was a surveillance plane operated by the European Union border monitoring force Frontex that spotted a fishing boat with 590 migrants aboard. A Frontex patrol boat and a support vessel supported the rescue operations for the two fishing boats.

Alarm Phone, a non-governmental organization that frequently receives satellite calls from migrants in the Mediterranean trying to reach European shores, and relays the information to maritime rescue coordination centers in Italy and Malta, was reportedly among the organizations telling Italian authorities about the dire situation the 130 people aboard the fourth boat were in.

Italian authorities didn’t immediately provide details on the migrants’ nationalities or routes taken by their vessels. Generally, many boats with migrants that make it to the Ionian Sea start the Mediterranean crossing from Turkey, where smugglers launch often overcrowded and flimsy boats.

In late February, a group of around 180 migrants set off with their wooden boat from western Turkey. Stormy weather caused the boat to capsize off Calabria and killed at least 94 migrants, among them 28 minors.

In the wake of the tragedy, which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Cutro shipwreck’ after the seaside resort Steccato di Cutro on whose coast the migrants were trying to land, the conservative government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sharply raised criminal penalties against migrant smugglers whose actions result in death.

However, Meloni denied any blame for the shipwreck despite her hard line on immigration and private sea rescue in the Mediterranean.

In late March, survivors of the shipwreck along with a 17-year-old Pakistani national accused of smuggling and being an alleged crew member on board the boat appeared in an Italian court. In late April, Austrian authorities returned one of the suspected smugglers of the boat — a 27-year-old Turkish national — to Italy following his arrest near the city of Graz.

Prosecutors in Crotone, moreover, are investigating the shipwreck and the rescue operations, including the role of several members of Italy’s border police unit, which operates vessels off the country’s long coastline.

Italian prosecutors also want to find out if a rescue operation could have been started hours earlier. Italian border police vessels reportedly returned to port because of rough seas. Bodies were already in the water by the time a more seaworthy coast guard vessel reached the area.

According to the latest statistics from the Italian Interior Ministry, as of June 8, over 53,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea since the beginning of the year.