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IMMIGRATION

Danish ship rescues refugees in Mediterranean

Responding to a call from the Italian coast guard, a Torm ship helped around 300 refugees to safety.

Danish ship rescues refugees in Mediterranean
A Torm ship (not the one pictured) came to the rescue of refugees over the weekend. Photo: Tim Green/Flickr
A Danish ship came to the assistance of Italian and Maltese authorities in saving roughly 300 refugees in the Mediterranean Sea this weekend. 
 
The shipping company Torm announced in a press release on Saturday that one of its ships, Torm Lotte, was contacted by the Italian coast guard for help in rescuing a boat filled with refugees that had run into trouble at sea.
 
The Danish ship reached the refugees’ boat after four hours and took the roughly 300 passengers on board. 
 
The refugees were then sailed to Malta and handed over to local authorities. 
 
The Italian island of Lampedusa has long struggled to deal with the influx of refugees arriving by sea.  
 

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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