ROME: Taking advantage of the return of calm seas, migrant smugglers launched a score of boats from Tunisia at the weekend, and their passengers reached a tiny Italian island by the hundreds. A body was found in one of the boats, Italian news reports said, and passengers said many other people from that boat were missing.
Dozens of the migrants sat Monday morning near Lampedusa’s port awaiting transfer to the island’s overcrowded shelter or eventually to Sicily or the Italian mainland.
Earlier Monday, a fishing boat off Lampedusa aided a distressed migrant boat that contained 34 survivors and a body, the Italian news agency ANSA said. Survivors reportedly told rescuers that some 20 fellow passengers were missing from the boat that had set out from a Tunisian port on Saturday night.
On Sunday, with seas calm after four days of rough conditions, a total of 640 migrants reached Lampedusa, while 179 migrants stepped ashore from four boats early Monday. In many cases, Italian coast guard or other military vessels took on migrants when they approached the island, including transferring the 34 from the fishing boat.
Last week, Italian authorities used commercial ferries and military vessels to transfer some of the migrants who had been rescued earlier from Lampedusa to Sicily or to the Italian mainland. Those transfers brought Lampedusa’s migrant residence finally below its approximately 400-person capacity. But with the slew of boats arriving starting on Sunday, the number of migrants at the residence quickly swelled to nearly 1,100, and authorities were scrambling anew to make arrangement for more transfers off the island.
Although far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni has led a crackdown both on smugglers and on the charity boats that frequently rescue passengers from unseaworthy boats launched from Tunisia, Libya and Turkiye, migrants keep setting out on the dangerous voyage in the Central Mediterranean in hopes of finding work or relatives in Europe.
According to figures provided by the Italian Interior Ministry, by last Friday, nearly 36,000 migrants had arrived in Italy since the start of the year. That’s more than four times the number who arrived in the same period in each of the two previous years.
Italy denies the bids of most of the migrants for asylum because they are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution. But since barely a handful of countries have repatriation accords with Italy, the migrants who lose asylum bids often stay in Italy for years in a kind of legal limbo, or try to make their way to northern European countries.
Italy’s pleas to fellow European Union nations to take on some of the migrants have largely gone unheeded for years now.
Hundreds of migrants reach Italy; 20 reported missing
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Hundreds of migrants reach Italy; 20 reported missing
- Dozens of the migrants sat Monday morning near Lampedusa’s port awaiting transfer to the island’s overcrowded shelter or eventually to Sicily or the Italian mainland
- According to figures provided by the Italian Interior Ministry, by last Friday, nearly 36,000 migrants had arrived in Italy since the start of the year
WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO
- And in a post on X, Tedros added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue”
GENEVA: The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe.”
And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”
He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.
They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States.”
The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.
- ‘Trashed and tarnished’ -
The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.
“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.
“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”
The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures.”
Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.
The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people.”
Tedros warned on X that the statement “contains inaccurate information.”
“Throughout the pandemic, WHO acted quickly, shared all information it had rapidly and transparently with the world, and advised Member States on the basis of the best available evidence,” the agency said.
“WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns,” it added.
“We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”
- Withdrawal ‘raises issues’ -
The row came as Washington struggled to dislodge itself from the WHO, a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect.
The one-year withdrawal process reached completion on Thursday, but Kennedy and Rubio regretted in their statement that the UN health agency had “not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation.”
WHO has highlighted that when Washington joined the organization in 1948, it reserved the right to withdraw, as long as it gave one year’s notice and had met “its financial obligations to the organization in full for the current fiscal year.”
But Washington has not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, and is behind around $260 million.
“The notification of withdrawal raises issues,” WHO said Saturday, adding that the topic would be examined during WHO’s Executive Board meeting next month and by the annual World Health Assembly meeting in May.
“We hope the US will return to active participation in WHO in the future,” Tedros said Saturday.
“Meanwhile, WHO remains steadfastly committed to working with all countries in pursuit of its core mission and constitutional mandate: the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right for all people.”
