As more migrants arrived in
Italy on Monday thanks to almost daily rescue operations,
harrowing scenes of desperation at the British-French border
caused the European Commission to call for "more solidarity".
A Doctors Without Borders (MSF) ship arrived Monday in
Palermo port carrying the bodies of four women and one man who
died of dehydration and 529 asylum seekers that were rescued
from unseaworthy vessels off the Libyan coast on Saturday.
The dead left small children orphaned, MSF doctors said.
The ship named Bourbon Argos carried out two rescue
operations Saturday, saving the lives of 111 and 107 people
respectively.
The five bodies were among the latter group, on a rubber
dinghy.
Fellow passengers told rescuers the five were healthy when
they left Libya but died during the 13 hours they were at sea.
Survivors and MSF carried out a funeral ceremony aboard the
Bourbon Argos for those who died during the crossing.
Also on Monday, an Italian Navy ship brought 369 rescued
asylum seekers to Reggio Calabria port.
Of these, 263 were men, 88 were women - eight of them
pregnant - and 45 were minors.
Separately on Monday, the Ragusa flying squad arrested
Tunisian national Mohamed Aenouri, 21, on suspicion of migrant
trafficking.
He allegedly skippered a vessel with 360 migrants on board
that was rescued Saturday, charging $1,500 a head for a total of
some $550,000, police said.
Elsewhere in Europe, tensions mounted as scenes of
desperation at the French port of Calais, here refugees and
asylum seekers have tried to break in to the Eurotunnel in order
to cross over to Great Britain, were coupled with the death of a
27-year-old Moroccan man who suffocated to death while trying to
smuggle himself into Spain inside a suitcase his brother had
placed in the boot of a car.
On Sunday, four Sub-Saharan migrants drowned while trying
to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, bringing the total such
fatalities to 15 since the start of the year, the Moroccan
interior ministry said.
In Paris, some 100 African asylum seekers occupied an
abandoned school and many more were sleeping rough by the side
of the Seine in full view of trendy nightclubs and tourist
attractions.
The European Commission said Monday EU member nations must
"up the level of solidarity" in the face of the migrant
emergency in tCalais.
"What is happening in Calais confirms what the Commission
has always said - that we need to up the level of solidarity and
the taking on of responsibility among member States," an EC
spokesperson said.
Back in Italy, vocal opponents of immigration called for
the country to espouse a hard line along the lines of British
Prime Minister David Cameron, whose conservative government has
outlined plans allowing illegal immigrants to be evicted without
a court order and for landlords who fail to evict them to face a
possible five years in prison.
The governor of the wealthy, northern Lombardy region was
among them.
"London's hard line on illegal immigration - prison for
those who host undocumented foreigners," tweeted Roberto Maroni
from the anti-immigrant, anti-euro Northern League party.
"That's how it's done, good for you David Cameron".
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