ROME (AP) – A Spanish-flagged humanitarian ship searched a safe haven for 265 migrants on Sunday, its crew rescued from the Mediterranean in recent days.
The charity Open Arms wrote on Twitter that its ship safely brought on board 96 migrants who had been adrift in a wooden boat without life jackets in international waters. It is said that the passengers, mostly from Eritrea, included two women and 17 minors and were suffering from hypothermia.
In a separate operation two days before that rescue, Open Arms took on board 169 migrants who had left the Libyan shores, where many human traffickers are.
Traffickers are launching ships, many of them in the form of thin rubber boats or shitty fishing boats, crowded with migrants hoping to reach European shores to seek asylum. Some are fleeing conflict or persecution, but many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been rescued at sea in recent years are fleeing poverty and are being denied asylum by European Union countries.
Italy and other EU countries, Malta, have often refused permission to dock humanitarian rescue boats, claiming that most migrants want to get jobs or relatives in northern Europe. The Italian and Maltese government authorities have insisted that other European nations do their part.