The death toll from the sinking of a migrant boat on Sunday in the Mediterranean near the Italian town of Crotone in Calabria (south) has risen to 62 dead, the coast guard told AFP on Monday morning.
The boat broke on rocks a few meters from the coast, according to this source. Footage from Italian police and AFP showed wood debris scattered over a hundred yards of the beach.
The previous count was 59 dead.
This tragedy made the front page of the Italian press on Monday.
“The massacre of the innocents”, headlined the Turin daily La Stampa with a photo of the wreckage of the boat. “The boat breaks 100 meters from the shore: the massacre of migrants”, wrote the front page of the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
Expressing her “deep pain”, the head of the far-right government, Giorgia Meloni, judged on Sunday “criminal to put a boat barely 20 meters into the sea with 200 people on board and a bad weather forecast”.
The head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen called on Sunday to move forward on the reform of the right of asylum in the European Union, after this “tragedy”.
She affirmed that it was necessary “to redouble efforts concerning the Pact on the migrations and the right of asylum, and on the Action plan for the central Mediterranean”.
Italy, a country of first entry where hundreds of thousands of migrants have arrived in recent years, criticizes its EU partners for a lack of solidarity in the distribution of the latter, even if a large number of them leave subsequently the peninsula for other countries.
Italy’s geographical location makes it a destination of choice for asylum seekers crossing from North Africa to Europe.
According to the Interior Ministry, nearly 14,000 migrants have landed in Italy since the start of the year, compared to around 5,200 during the same period last year and 4,200 in 2021.
NGOs pick up only a small percentage of migrants wishing to reach Europe at sea, with most being rescued by Coast Guard or Navy vessels.
However, the government accuses these NGOs of stimulating the arrival of migrants through their action and encouraging traffickers.
02/27/2023 11:30:43 – Cutro (Italie) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
