Rome (Kaab TV) –The Italian Coast Guard said yesterday that it had dispatched rescue operations for two overcrowded boats carrying a total of about 1,200 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
It was a latest in a string of missions to aid boats that had found themselves in distress, as rough seas made crossing from Africa to Europe particularly perilous. The Italian authorities said that, since Friday, they had rescued an additional 2,000 people making the journey.
Organizations monitoring such crossings have raised concerns about the high number of migrants fleeing war and poverty who are risking the journey across the Mediterranean. Calls have increased for Europe as a whole to find a more coherent way of dealing with the arrivals and to devote more resources to the problem.
The rescue operations come amid a furious debate in Italy about how to handle the arrivals. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has promised to enact a “naval blockade” against migrant boats and has tried to force charity-run ships rescuing migrants to return to an Italian port after each mission, limiting the number of migrants they can help.
With different countries enacting a patchwork of responses, migrant-rights advocates say that lives are being put in danger. “The situation is completely chaotic,” said Felix Weiss, a spokesman for Sea-Watch International, an organization that runs rescue ships in the central Mediterranean.