ROME: Hundreds of migrants stranded for days on an aid ship in the Mediterranean because Italy and Malta refused to take them in were being transferred to other boats Tuesday ahead of their journey to Spain.
Rescuers warned of deteriorating weather conditions facing the 629 people — including pregnant women and scores of children — who have been crammed on the Aquarius vessel since being plucked from the sea off the Libyan coast at the weekend.
With food and drink running short, their plight could last another three or four more days before they are finally able to land in Spain, according to the French charity SOS Mediterranee which operates the ship.
Spain stepped in to help after Italy — which has been on the front line of the migration crisis in Europe — and Malta refused to allow the Aquarius to land despite strong pressure from the international community.
Italy’s stance has triggered a war of words with its European allies, with France in particular accusing it of being “irresponsible.”
SOS said over half those on board would be transferred to two official Italian vessels before all three boats make the 1,500 kilometer journey to the Spanish port of Valencia from the Aquarius’s current position between Sicily and Malta.
Doctors from another French charity, MSF (Doctors without Borders), are helping treat the migrants, who include seven pregnant women, 11 young children and 123 unaccompanied minors. Many of them are from Africa.
Spain’s new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had offered the boat safe harbor, saying there was a moral “obligation to help to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Anelize Borges, a Euronews correspondent on the Aquarius, told AFP that weather forecasts were predicting waves as high as two meters (seven feet).
“Even if the conditions are OK, and we go only with 100 people aboard it could take three, three-and-a-half days to get to Spain,” Borges added.
That would mean the migrants will have been at sea for almost a week by the time they arrive in Valencia.
Borges said they had been at sea for 20-30 hours before being rescued, and nerves were fraught.
“Yesterday they told the people on board that there could be a possibility that we would not be going to Italy but that we didn’t know yet where we were going to go and obviously people got terrified,” she said.
“A man threatened to throw himself off the boat, saying he didn’t want to go back to Libya, for some people the prosect of going back was really really scary.”
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said he would go to Libya — the launchpad for many migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East — by the end of the month.
“This situation needs to be resolved on the African continent,” said Salvini, whose new populist government has vowed a tougher stance on immigration.
He wants to cut the number of arrivals to Italy — something already achieved by his predecessor thanks to a deal struck with Libyan authorities — while accelerating the expulsion of “illegals.”
Migrants on rescue ship get Spanish lifeline
Migrants on rescue ship get Spanish lifeline
- This situation needs to be resolved on the African continent,” said Salvini, whose new populist government has vowed a tougher stance on immigration
- Spain’s new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had offered the boat safe harbor, saying there was a moral “obligation to help to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
