A total of 5,112 people have arrived in Lampedusa, the Italian territory closest to the African continent, in 24 hours, a figure that surpasses all records reached so far on the small island, whose dock has been crowding dozens of migrants for hours. .
This Tuesday, 110 landings were recorded, while another 23 have been recorded since midnight, with nearly another thousand migrants, many of whom are waiting at the dock to be transferred, according to local media, although the reception center only It has capacity for 400.
During one of the operations carried out this morning by the coast guard, some of the 46 migrants traveling in a boat fell into the water and were rescued, although a five-month-old newborn drowned and his body was transferred to the Cala Pisana warehouse. , indicated the same sources.
“In the center of Lampedusa there are more than 6,000 people this morning, many of them families with minors. The transfers are planned for today, but the situation is difficult due to the more than 100 landings registered in the last hours. We are holding on in the reception management, concentrating above all on the most fragile”, explained the Italian Red Cross in a statement.
The rescue operations of the security forces have not ceased in recent hours, while numerous arrivals of migrants who have landed on the island on their own have also been recorded.
The rescue personnel are unable to update the numbers and the large number of arrivals has ended up saturating both the dock and the port, where throughout yesterday a traffic jam of boats waiting to disembark formed.
According to local media, this is the largest number of boats that have arrived in Lampedusa in a single day and its mayor, Filippo Mannino, urged the Government of Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday to take “emergency measures” such as the intervention of the army.
“Nothing like this has ever been seen, with dozens and dozens of small boats escorted or attached to the rescue units in front of the port, and others that manage to arrive directly,” said Mannino, for whom these are “figures that are no longer sustainable.” on this island. We need the Defense to intervene.”
In addition, the Diciotti ship provided aid to nearly 800 people in the Mediterranean Sea, who were taken to other ports to avoid filling Lampedusa even more, whose reception center is saturated again, having been emptied after landings decreased last year. week due to bad weather.
So far this year, 116,028 migrants have landed in Italy, more than double that of the same period last year (63,498), according to the latest official figures published by the Ministry of the Interior.
