23 migrants from Ocean Viking land at Catania

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 16 - Twenty-three migrants from the Sos Medtirranee rescue NGO Ocean Viking were disembarked in Catania as a precautionary measure and the ship continued on to Ancona, the port initially assigned, with on board 359 shipwrecked migrants.
    They were saved during four rescues carried out by the humanitarian ship of the NGO: 265 men, 31 women, 20 accompanied minors with their families and 43 unaccompanied minors.
    Also on the ship were the 25 surviving migrants rescued by the crew of the humanitarian ship after their dinghy sank from Libya.
    According to the dramatic accounts of the shipwrecked survivors, about 60 of their companions died.
    Two migrants had been transported by helicopter from Ocean Viking Friday due to the seriousness of their condition; one died at the hospital in Agrigento, while the other is hospitalised in Palermo.
    The Ocean Viking had been assigned to the port of Ancona, a mid-Adriatic port, in a move that was criticised as being too far away by migrant and human rights groups.
    Due to the general seriousness of the migrants' conditions, many of them with burns and suffering from days at sea adrift, the crew and even opposition politicians had asked Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi to have the migrants disembark at a port nearer than Ancona to prevent the situation from worsening.
    (ANSA).