(ANSAmed) - ROMA, 10 APR - Almost 1,000 migrants landed
Sunday on Lampedusa, the island south of Sicily and closest to
Africa than to Italy which is used as a stepping stone for
desperate migrants, local official said.
They were followed Monday by 36 more who were picked up in
Italy's search and rescue (SAR) area by a coast guard patrol
boat.
The island's migrant reception centre is overflowing several
times over.
The thirty-six migrants, including eight women and a minor, were
rescued during the night in the Sar area by the Coast Guard
patrol boat Cp319. The 7-metre boat on which they were
travelling, which set sail at 3am on Friday, was left adrift,
and the migrants, after being transshipped onto the rescue unit,
were disembarked in Lampedusa. They reported being from Burkina
Faso, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Guinea.
On Sunday, there were 26 landings in Lampedusa with a total of
974 people. The Agrigento public prosecutor's office opened an
investigation into the shipwreck on the night between Saturday
and Easter Sunday in the central Mediterranean, in Maltese Sar
waters. There were 22 survivors, including nine women, rescued
by the ship Nadir of the German NGO Resqship, which also
recovered the bodies of two men. According to witnesses there
are 18 missing. (ANSAmed).
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