Italy rescues 5,600 migrants on anniversary of dinghy disaster

Italy coordinated the rescue of more than 5,600 migrants off Libya Monday, three years to the day after 366 people died in a sinking that first alerted the world to the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

In a poignant reminder of the ongoing drama being played out on Europe’s southern shores, at least one body was recovered from a total of 39 distressed vessels, the bulk of them overcrowded rubber dinghies but also including five converted fishing boats.

Just under 200 minors were among those saved from one of the former fishing boats which had some 720 people crammed onboard, according to NGO SOS Mediterranee.

Most of the minors were unaccompanied and nine were under five years old. At least ten of the 191 women on board were pregnant.

Two women and a child had to be evacuated for medical treatment after suffering severe burns caused by spilled fuel during a rescue from a rubber dinghy by a boat operated by the Doctors without Borders (MSF) charity.

In the disaster three years ago, a fishing boat packed with some 500 people caught fire and sank rapidly in darkness just off the outlying Italian island of Lampedusa in the night of October 2-3.

‘Indifference is killing people’

A total of 366 bodies were recovered in the hold or washed up on the coast of an island where Pope Francis had, a few months previously, railed against the “globalization of indifference” towards the plight of migrants seeking better lives in Europe.

The disaster resulted in Italy’s navy launching a large-scale search and rescue operation that has since evolved into a multinational effort involving groups like MSF and Save the Children.

Hundreds of thousands have been rescued but at least 11,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean since the Lampedusa tragedy, according to figures collated by the UN refugee agency.

The president of the Italian Red Cross, Francesco Rocca, said his organization’s volunteers who had witnessed the horrors of that day were still haunted by it.

“Three years later and people continue to die in their thousands – nothing has changed. Indifference is killing people.”

Italy last year declared October 3 a national day of commemoration and welcome in honor of the dead.

A commemorative march was held on Lampedusa on Monday with 200 youths from all over Europe and relatives of some of the victims taking part.

The latest people to be rescued will add to a total of some 132,000 migrants who had landed at Italy’s southern ports since the start of 2016 by the end of September.

The new arrivals are mostly Africans who plan to try to get to northern Europe but increasingly are obliged to seek asylum or the right to remain in Italy, where reception centers have been strained to bursting point.