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Illegal immigration: More than 1,000 migrants arrived in Italy


Palermo - The Italian coast guard has picked up around 700 migrants in the Mediterranean. Five bodies were also found on a fishing boat on Saturday, the Coast Guard said on Sunday. The boat had drifted more than 200 kilometers off the Calabrian coast, a merchant ship and several ships belonging to the Italian authorities had rescued a total of 674 people, some of them directly from the water. They came to Sicilian and Calabrian ports.

By late Saturday evening, 522 people on 15 boats from Tunisia and Libya had already reached the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. According to "aid organizations", hundreds of other shipwrecked people are waiting to go ashore. According to its own statements, the Berlin-based organization "Sea-Watch" rescued more than 400 people, including a few children, during four missions.

According to the Italian Ministry of the Interior in Rome, around 34,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy since the beginning of the year. In the previous year there were only 25,500 people, in 2020 almost 11,000. According to Italian media, the initial reception center on Lampedusa, which is designed for a maximum of 300 people, is overcrowded. According to the Ansa news agency, 1,200 people are currently on site.

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