ROME: Italy’s coast guard said Sunday it had rescued 91 people from a migrant boat adrift off the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, but two males were found dead.
The boat was drifting some 16 nautical miles from the Italian island when it was located by an EU border agency plane, the coast guard said in a statement, adding it had dispatched two patrol boats.
“During the inspection of the below-deck areas, additional migrants in serious health conditions and two bodies, both male, were discovered,” it said.
The survivors — 85 men, one woman and five presumed minors — were disembarked and some taken to hospital by helicopter.
Italian news agency Ansa said that 14 of the migrants were in serious condition, with three requiring intubation.
Ansa said the two migrants died after inhaling petrol while below deck, with 14 others ill for the same reason.
The migrants came from Pakistan, Eritrea and Somalia, it said.
The waters off Lampedusa were the site of another migrant disaster on Friday, when about 20 people went missing after a shipwreck.
The coast guard said Friday that 11 people had been rescued, and one body was recovered, but the rest of the approximately 30 people from that boat were unaccounted for.
Italian coast guard says rescues dozens of migrants, two dead
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Italian coast guard says rescues dozens of migrants, two dead
- Boat was drifting some 16 nautical miles from Lampedusa island
- 85 men, one woman and five presumed minors have survived
Man charged after defacing Churchill statue in central London
- Metropolitan Police said Caspar San Giorgio was charged early Saturday, some 24 hours after his arrest
- He had been detained within minutes of officers being alerted to the incident
LONDON: London police said Saturday a man had been charged with criminal damage for defacing a statue of Britain’s World War II prime minister Winston Churchill with pro-Palestinian slogans.
The monument in the central Parliament Square was smeared with red paint early on Friday and “Zionist war criminal” among the slogans written on it.
The Metropolitan Police said Caspar San Giorgio, 38, of no fixed address, was charged early Saturday, some 24 hours after his arrest.
He had been detained within minutes of officers being alerted to the incident, according to the force.
He was due to appear at a London magistrates’ court later Saturday.
The words “free Palestine” and “stop the genocide” were also sprayed on the statue, which workers cleaned off Friday.
The incident prompted Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office to call the damage “completely abhorrent” and commend police for the swift arrest.
“Churchill was a great Briton,” a spokesman said.
The 3.6 meter (12-foot) Churchill statue has been vandalized a number of times in recent years, including during Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion climate demonstrations in 2020.
