Italian authorities said on Sunday that the German civilian ship CI4 with eight hundred migrants on board had obtained a docking permit in Trapani, Sicily.
In the port of Trapani, people from the local prefecture and the Red Cross received the ship, which arrived in the early afternoon.
Immigrants are individually screened and tested and then identified. Eight hundred people will be placed on quarantine ships over the next two weeks, with the exception of minors and juveniles, who will also be placed in their designated quarantine facilities. There are two hundred minors and juveniles among the arrivals.
Between Tuesday and Thursday, Sea Eye carried 4 migrants on board from the waters of the Sicily Channel from seven different ships. The last four hundred people were picked up in Maltese waters from a ship in distress. Malta refused to set the sea-eye clause.
Gorden Isler, head of the German NGO, thanked Italy. He expressed his belief that “Europe should condemn Malta for not coordinating rescue operations and for refusing to assist ships in danger.”
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the pro-government League, wrote in a community publication that “After a German ship left more than eight hundred illegal immigrants in Sicily, the question arises as to whether the Ministers of Interior and Foreign Affairs had asked Berlin and Brussels to take on these immigrants or not ?
Another ship, the Ocean Viking, operated by the French organization Sos Mediterranee, is waiting in the waters of Lampedusa for a mooring permit with 308 people on board.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 55 thousand migrants have arrived in Italy, compared to about thirty thousand in the same period last year.
