More than 1,100 migrants and refugees have been rescued in two operations coordinated by the Italian Coast Guard in the last few hours, in a hardly unprecedented intervention that coincides with the warnings of the new Italian government against irregular immigration.
The Coast Guard has acknowledged in a statement that they were «complex» operations, aimed at saving migrants who had departed from the coast of Libya aboard boats allegedly intended for fishing.
The first of these took place some 35 miles off the coast. A Coast Guard boat took on board 416 people, while a Spanish patrol boat linked to the surveillance mission of the European agency Frontex recovered 78 others.
On the other hand, already early Wednesday morning, the Italian coast guard recovered 663 migrants about 60 miles off the coast. «Two lifeless bodies were recovered,» the institution has reported.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni already warned on Tuesday in her first speech to the Chamber of Deputies that she would toughen migration policies, under the pretext of fighting against mafias. Her proposals include setting up centers outside Italy to help verify the needs of migrants.
The League, which controls the Interior Ministry, already applied in its first stage in this department a doctrine of ‘closed ports’ for NGO boats, several of which are still active in the central Mediterranean. «This government intends to enforce rules and borders,» party leader Matteo Salvini stressed on Twitter.
Italian authorities estimate that some 80,000 migrants have reached the shores this year. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), for its part, estimates that in this time some 1,300 people have perished along the way, dead or missing in the central Mediterranean area.
