54 migrants rescued from Mediterranean oil platform
On Friday, one of the migrants gave birth to a boy, while another woman had given birth days before
Updated 08 June 2025
AFP
ROME: Over 50 migrants were headed to the Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday after a charity ship rescued them from an abandoned oil platform in the Mediterranean, where one woman gave birth.
The vessel Astral, operated by the Spain-based NGO Open Arms, rescued the 54 people, the group said in a statement.
The migrants had been trapped on the oil platform for three days after their rubber boat shipwrecked following their departure from Libya on Tuesday, Open Arms said.
On Friday, one of the migrants gave birth to a boy, while another woman had given birth days before.
Two other young children were among the group, Open Arms said.
Later Sunday, the charity said that, following the rescue of those on the oil platform, the Astral came upon another 109 people, including four people in the water.
That group, which included 10 children, had also departed from Libya, it said.
Open Arms said they provided life jackets to the migrants before they were rescued by another charity ship, the Louise Michel, which street artist Banksy sponsors.
The Louise Michel, a former French navy vessel, was transporting the migrants to a safe port in Sicily, Open Arms said.
It is not unusual for migrants crossing the Mediterranean on leaky and overcrowded boats to seek refuge on offshore oil platforms.
As of June 1, some 23,000 migrants had reached Italy by sea this year, according to the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR.
China to support ‘reunification forces’ in Taiwan, go after ‘separatists’
Updated 2 sec ago
BEIJING: China will offer firm support for “patriotic pro-reunification forces” in Taiwan and strike hard against “separatists,” the top Chinese official in charge of policy toward the democratically-governed island said in comments published on Tuesday. China, which views Taiwan as its own territory despite the objections of the government in Taipei, has ramped up its military and political pressure against the island as Beijing seeks to assert its sovereignty claims. Addressing this year’s annual “Taiwan Work Conference,” the ruling communist party’s fourth-ranked leader Wang Huning said officials must advance the “great cause of national reunification,” the official state-run Xinhua news agency said. It is necessary to “firmly support the patriotic pro-unification forces on the island, resolutely strike against ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces, oppose interference by external forces, and safeguard peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Xinhua paraphrased him as saying. The Beijing meeting was also attended by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, underscoring how China sees Taiwan as an issue it needs to promote on the international stage. China has long offered Taiwan a Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” model of autonomy, though no major Taiwanese political party supports that. Taiwan’s government says Beijing’s rule in the former British colony has only brought repression, with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te on Tuesday citing the sentencing of Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai to 20 years prison the previous day. “Jimmy Lai’s sentencing exposes the Hong Kong national security law for what it is — a tool of political persecution under China’s ‘one country, two systems’ that tramples human rights & freedom of press,” Lai wrote on X. There was no immediate response to Wang Huning’s comments from Taiwan’s government, which says only the island’s people can decide their future. Beijing has repeatedly warned other countries including the US against meddling in Taiwan issue, which it said is its internal affair. In a call with US President Donald Trump last week, China’s President Xi Jinping said the Taiwan issue is the most important issue in China-US relations and Washington must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence. China refuses to speak to Taiwan’s president and has rebuffed his repeated offers of talks, saying he is a “separatist” who must accept that Taiwan is part of China. Wang was speaking just a week after meeting a delegation from Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), who were in Beijing for a meeting of party think-tanks. Speaking to reporters earlier on Tuesday in Taipei, KMT Vice Chairman Hsiao Hsu-tsen, who led the delegation to Beijing, said there had been no discussion of political issues when they met Wang, as the trip there was to discuss topics like tourism and AI.
