Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Rome, June 22, 2024, 15:20 - IA Regnum. A sailboat carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea off the southern coast of Italy on June 18, killing 34 people, eight of whom were minors, local newspaper Corriere della Calabria reported.
The material specifies that planes were also sent to search for the dead. The bodies of the victims were taken aboard coast guard ships.
One of the NGOs that was involved in rescuing migrants clarified to the publication that there were 66 people on board the ship, 26 of them children. Eleven migrants managed to escape and were left without help on the high seas for several days.
As Regnum reported, in Italy, a particularly large influx of migrants is observed on the southern island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea, located 113 km from Tunisia. Illegal migrants arrive on the island every day. Residents of African countries are the main asylum seekers who risk dangerous sea journeys in the hope of reaching Europe via Italy.
Thus, in December 2023, more than 60 people drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya. Most of the passengers on the sunken boat were citizens of Nigeria, Gambia and other African countries. In June of the same year, the fishing vessel Adriana with 750 passengers on board, heading from Libya to Italy, sank in international waters off the coast of Greece. According to survivors, the ship was mostly citizens of Egypt, Syria and Pakistan. Only 104 people survived.
In September 2023, Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk accused Russia of involvement in the migration crisis on the island of Lampedusa in Italy. The diplomat did not provide any evidence for such allegations. According to him, someone is helping migrants from Central African countries and Nigeria get to the Mediterranean Sea and then to Europe.
Russia has repeatedly denied unsubstantiated accusations from the EU about Moscow’s alleged involvement in the migration crisis in the union. According to the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, the West is escalating tension in attempts to “fool its population with horror stories about terrible Russians.” According to him, this is how Western politicians are trying to hide internal economic and internal political problems from the population.
|
