619 Migrants Arrive on the Italian Island of Lampedusa

In the last 24 hours, 619 migrants have arrived on the island of Lampedusa, and it is expected that 119, rescued by Sea Watch, will soon disembark at the Marina di Carrara port.

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Almost 600 Migrants Arrive on Italy's Lampedusa Island

Since Tuesday, there have been 17 landings of migrants traveling on precarious boats across the Mediterranean Sea. In the early hours of Wednesday, 137 migrants reached Lampedusa aboard three 7-meter boats. There were also 14 landings with 482 migrants

The two largest groups, composed of Bengalis, Egyptians, Eritreans, Pakistanis, Syrians, and Ethiopians, departed from Zuara (Libya), while the group of 15 migrants claimed to have set sail on Tuesday morning from Sfax (Tunisia).

In the coming hours, the Sea Watch 5 ship, which rescued 119 immigrants in the central Mediterranean waters on Dec. 24, will also arrive at Marina di Carrara. The NGO lamented that the Italian authorities assigned them to such a distant port.

"It's about 1,150 kilometers away. The purpose of these distant ports is to keep rescue ships away from the operational zone so they can't save other people in distress," Sea Watch said.

Meanwhile, the ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms is heading to the central Mediterranean for a new migrant rescue operation. According to data from the Interior Ministry updated as of Dec. 22, at least 153,677 migrants have arrived on Italian shores this year, half of them unassisted and the rest rescued by Italian patrol boats and humanitarian vessels.

Flavio di Giacomo, the spokesperson for the Office of Coordination for the Mediterranean of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), reported that 2,271 people died in the central Mediterranean this year, representing a 60 percent increase in victims compared to 2022, when 1,413 migrants died.