facebooktwittertelegramwhatsapp
copy short urlprintemail
+ A
A -
webmaster
Reuters
MADRID/ROME
Spain on Sunday offered Algeciras as a port to disembark more than a hundred migrants on a charity rescue ship stranded off the coast of Italy after the vessel had spent more than two weeks waiting for a safe port to be made available.
The migrants, most of whom are African, were picked up by the Open Arms boat off the coast of Libya and have been waiting to disembark on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has ordered his officials not to let them land, though he made a partial concession on Saturday by allowing 27 minors to leave the boat.
He added that he had only agreed to this at the insistence of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. “Spain always acts on humanitarian emergencies. It is necessary to establish an orderly and supportive European solution, leading the migration challenge with the EU’s values of progress and humanism,” Spanish acting prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Salvini said triumphantly on Facebook that Spain’s decision vindicated his hard-line stance.
“Those who stick it out are the ones who win,” he said, adding that “probably any other minister would have given in.” He renewed his constant attacks of recent days on Open Arms, accusing it of lying about the condition of the migrants.
He said a medical inspection on the boat by Italian authorities on Saturday had shown there was no sanitary emergency on board as the charity had claimed.
copy short url   Copy
19/08/2019
401