July 24, 2022, 4:54 PM
July 24, 2022, 4:54 PM
More than a thousand migrants have landed in Italy in the last few hours and hundreds more have been rescued by humanitarian ships, a recurring influx every summer, but which enters this year in the middle of the campaign for the September legislative elections, in which the far-right party is the favorite.
More than 600 people who tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea aboard a fishing boat they were rescued on Saturday by a merchant ship and coastguard when it was drifting off the coast of Calabria, at the southern end of the Italian peninsula.
The migrants were then taken to various ports on the island of Sicily.
Authorities found five dead migrant bodies aboard the ship in unknown circumstances.
Reception center is overwhelmed
In the night from Saturday to Sunday they arrived at the island of Lampedusa 522 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, mostly aboard some 15 boats from Tunisia and Libya.
Italian media say that the reception center on the small Italian island off the coast of Africa is overwhelmed.
The Ansa agency states that currently houses 1,200 people, when it has a capacity of 250.
The migrants who manage to reach the shores of Lampedusa or Sicily travel in small, overloaded boats in deplorable sanitary conditions. Many times without life jackets, with little food and under a scorching sun.
