Italy’s coast guard coordinated the rescue of 4,400 migrants from boats in the Mediterranean in a single day on Saturday, officials said yesterday as three new rescue operations were launched.
Saturday’s total was thought to be the highest for a single day in recent years as calm conditions encouraged people smugglers to leave Libya with boats loaded with as many paying passengers on board as possible.
The coast guard said it had received distress calls from a total of 22 vessels, either inflatable dinghies or wooden former fishing boats — all of them dangerously overcrowded and many of them lacking basic safety equipment.
Photo: AP
Boats from the Italian coast guard, navy and customs police all took part in the rescue operation alongside Norway’s Siem Pilot and Ireland’s Niamh, ships serving with the EU’s Triton search and rescue mission.
There were no reports of migrants having died during Saturday’s operations or prior to the rescue boats arriving.
With military rescue assets at full stretch, the coast guard said that it had been obliged to ask merchant ships to go to the rescue of the boats that were in trouble yesterday.
The rescued migrants were to be deposited at southern Italian ports from later yesterday onward, and the new arrivals lift to more than 108,000 the number of asylum seekers and other migrants to have arrived in Italy this year.
The wave of new arrivals triggered increasingly virulent attacks on center-left Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s handling of the migration crisis.
“This must a joke. We are using our own forces to do the people smugglers’ business for them and ensure we are invaded,” Italian Senator Maurizio Gasparri of Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia party said.
Member of European Parliament Matteo Salvini called on the government to house the migrants on disused Italian oil rigs off Libya.
“Help them, rescue them and take care of them, but don’t let them land here,” the populist leader of the anti-immigration Northern League wrote on Facebook.
Police in Palermo, Sicily, on Saturday announced that they had arrested six Egyptian nationals on suspicion of people smuggling following the rescue of a stricken boat on Wednesday.
Testimony from the 432 migrants on board suggest the vessel had been packed with more than 10 times the number of people it was designed for, with many of the passengers, including a number of women and children, locked below decks.
They had each paid the traffickers 2,000 euros (US$2,200) for the passage from Egypt to Italy, according to statements given to police.
On board, the crew were reported to have demanded further payment to allow those locked in the hold to come up temporarily for air.
Humanitarian organizations say the surge in the number of people trying to reach EU countries is the result of conflicts or repression in Africa and the Middle East.
They have called on European governments to shoulder more of the burden of absorbing the wave of asylum seekers and to help create safer routes for them to reach Europe.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source