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IMMIGRATION

Some 50 migrants lost at sea off Spain after rubber boat sinks

Around 50 migrants are missing and feared drowned at sea, Spanish coastguards said Tuesday, after they rescued three "exhausted and disorientated" men from a rubber boat that had initially held many more people.

Some 50 migrants lost at sea off Spain after rubber boat sinks
The coastguard searching for survivors. Photo: Salvamento Maritimo

“We suppose” that they drowned, a spokeswoman for the coastguards told AFP, adding however that rescue forces were still surveying the seas near Spain's Alboran Island where the boat was found drifting, to try and find any survivors.

If the missing are confirmed dead, this will be the deadliest sea crossing in this part of the Mediterranean since the start of the year.   

So far, 60 migrants have died trying to cross the waters to Spain from north Africa since January, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The “half-sunk” boat was spotted around 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of Alboran Island, which lies in the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean.   

The survivors, three men aged 17 to 25 from sub-Saharan Africa, “explained that more than 50 people were on board the rubber boat which had been drifting for several days after leaving the northern coast of Morocco,” the coastguards said in a statement.

They were taken to hospital in Almeria in southern Spain, and are still too weak to tell a detailed story of what happened, the spokeswoman said.    

According to the IOM, 6,464 people reached Spain after crossing the Mediterranean between January 1 and June 25.    Another 60 died.

Altogether, at least 2,247 people have died or are missing after trying to cross the sea into Europe via Spain, Italy or Greece this year, the IOM says.

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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