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IMMIGRATION

Scores of migrants feared missing off Libya: IOM

Scores of migrants were feared missing off the Libyan coast, the IOM said Saturday after the Italian navy flew three survivors to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.

Published: 20 January 2019 11:28 CET
Scores of migrants feared missing off Libya: IOM
A Sea Watch 3 crew member marks with spray paint a rubber boat that the NGO destroyed after rescuing 47 migrants that were onboard. Photo: AFP

The International Organization for Migration said the three, who were suffering from hypothermia, had reported that there were initially 120 people on board their inflatable boat.

That meant “there would be 117 missing, including 10 women and a 10-month-old baby,” IOM Italia said in comments posted on Twitter.

Earlier the Italian navy said that three migrants had died and about 15 remained missing, after it staged a rescue operation in the Mediterranean.

The navy intervened on Friday and a helicopter rescued the three people, one plucked from the sea and two from life rafts dropped by an air force plane, Admiral Fabio Agostini said.

Air force pilots had “spotted a dinghy in distress carrying about 20 people,” he told Italian television in an interview tweeted by the navy.

“Three corpses were seen floating in the water during the operation,” he said, adding that the rescuers had been unable to locate the dinghy.

The IOM said that most of the migrants were from Cameroon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sudan.

The three survivors said they had been in the sea for about three hours before help arrived.

The German charity group Sea Watch said Saturday that it had rescued 47 migrants from an inflatable boat, but it was not known if they belonged to the same group.

A Red Crescent spokesman meanwhile said 16 bodies had been found on the beaches of the Libyan city of Sirte between January 2nd and 15th.

According to the IOM, 83 people have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean.

It said the number of migrants and refugees landing on European shores had almost doubled in the first 16 days of this year to 4,216 against 2,365 over the same period in 2018.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said “we cannot turn a blind eye to the high numbers of people dying on Europe's doorstep”.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, in a Facebook video, said “the shipwrecks are back in the Mediterranean. The boats are leaving again and we are counting the dead”.

But Salvini insisted there was no question of reconsidering his decision to ban access to Italian ports to NGOs, which he accused of playing the people smugglers' game.

READ ALSO: Residents help group of 50 migrants to shore in southern Italy 

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Published: 4 June 2024 14:50 CEST
Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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