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MIGRANT CRISIS

At least 30 migrants missing in shipwrecks off Italy

At least 30 migrants are missing following two shipwrecks off the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to survivor testimony, the UN's migration agency said on Sunday.

At least 30 migrants missing in shipwrecks off Italy
This file aerial photo shows the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Meditteranean Sea, which in recent years has been an arrival point for migrants crossing from North Africa. Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP

Around 28 people were reported lost at sea by survivors on one boat, while three were reported missing from the second, after both went down in stormy weather on Saturday, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Both were rickety iron boats believed to have set off from Sfax in Tunisia on Thursday.

Cultural mediators with the IOM believed there were “at least 30 people missing” after speaking to the survivors, press officer Flavio Di Giacomo told AFP.

An investigation into the shipwrecks has been opened in Agrigento, on the nearby Italian island of Sicily.

Agrigento’s chief of police Emanuele Ricifari said the traffickers would have known rough seas were forecast.

“Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is an unscrupulous criminal lunatic,” he told Italian media.

“Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let’s hope they stop. It’s sending them to slaughter with this sea,” he said.

Trapped

As the stormy weather continued, fire brigade and alpine rescue teams were preparing on Sunday to pull to safety some 20 migrants trapped on a rocky part of Lampedusa’s coastline.

The migrants have been there since late Friday, after their boat was tossed onto the rocks by strong winds. They have been provided with food, water, clothes and emergency thermal blankets by the Red Cross, but the coastguard has been unable to rescue them by sea due to the high waves.

Should the winds not drop, rescuers will begin winching them up the 140-metre (460 foot) high cliff to safety, media reports said.

READ ALSO: ‘More will drown’: Italy accused of breaking international law on migrant rescues

The Central Mediterranean crossing from North Africa to Europe is the world’s deadliest. Over 1,800 people have died attempting it so far this year, Di Giacomo said — almost 900 more than last year.

“The truth is that figure is likely to be much higher. Lots of bodies are being found at sea, suggesting there are many shipwrecks we never hear about,” he said.

The number of bodies found has increased in particular on the so-called Tunisian route, which has become increasingly dangerous, Di Flavio said, because of the type of boats used.

Sub-Saharan migrants are being put out to sea by traffickers “in iron boats which cost less than the usual wooden ones, but are utterly unseaworthy, they easily break up and sink”, he said.

Migrants also often have the engines stolen from their boats at sea, so that traffickers can re-use them.

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POLITICS

Italy considering ‘reciprocal plan’ to swap refugees with US

Italy and the United States are drawing up a plan to exchange a small number of refugees in a reported bid to deter illegal migration, an Italian government source said on Friday.

Italy considering 'reciprocal plan' to swap refugees with US

“A reciprocal plan is currently being studied, according to which the US would host refugees present in Libya who want to go to Europe,” a source in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said.

At the same time, “some European Mediterranean states would host a few dozen South American refugees”, the source said.

The source was responding to a report by CBS News in the United States, which suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration was also in talks with Greece.

CBS said refugees would be selected at immigration offices set up by the United States last year in four Latin American countries.

It said 500 people could be sent both to Italy and Greece, though the source in Meloni’s office said that figure was “completely misleading”.

Rome is looking to accept “about 20 Venezuelan refugees of Italian origin” who would be able to work in Italy, the source said.

The plan would be “very advantageous for Italy and the European states of first arrival”, the source said, without elaborating.

A separate source at Italy’s interior ministry said Rome would “never assent to the relocation of hundreds of people on its national territory in view of its already considerable efforts in receiving migrants”.

In Athens, Greek migration minister Dimitris Kairidis dismissed the report.

“The CBS report is untrue. There is neither an agreement nor a request from the US to resettle legal immigrants in Greece,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

More than 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern US border in 2023 alone, largely from Central America and Venezuela, as they flee poverty, violence and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change.

Meanwhile Italy is among the first ports of call for migrants crossing from North Africa into Europe, recording almost 160,000 irregular arrivals by boat across the central Mediterranean last year.

Meloni’s government has made stopping irregular migration into Italy a priority.

It has sought to speed up asylum processing requests while signing new deals with departure countries.

It has also tried to deter migrants by setting up a new processing centre in Albania and limiting the activities of charities that operate rescue boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearly 21,000 migrants have landed on Italy’s shores so far this year, compared to more than 50,000 in the same period last year, according to government data.

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