Moment Italian coast guard boards vessels to rescue more than 1,000 migrants
THIS is the shocking moment the Italian coast guard board a boat in a bid to rescue migrants as they attempt to make the often fatal journey to Europe.
Italian Coast Guard rescues 800 migrants off Libyan coast
More than 1,000 migrants were pulled from different migrant ships, with 16 bodies also recovered in the past two days off the coast of Libya, according to Italy’s coast guard.
Workers saved some 800 migrants from nine different vessels on Sunday before the rescue of another 230 migrants from another boat, adding to the already record number of arrivals this year.
Three vessels – the Diciotti of the Italian Coast Guard, the Samuel Beckett of the Irish Navy and the Aquarius of the NGO SOS Mediterranean – pulled migrants to safety from five rubber boats and four vessels sailing towards the European coast.
In a statement from the Irish Defence Forces, they explain the operation began at 8.30am on Saturday about 42 kilometres off the coast of Tripoli and had successfully rescued the first vessel by 9.50am.
Italian coast guard rescue workers rescued migrants off the Libyan coast
Smugglers no longer need large and robust boats
Their operation continued into Monday where they made further rescues in the same area.
In the harrowing footage shot by a rescue worker, a large group of migrants can be seen dangerously crowded into a rubber dinghy in the distance.
Rescuers rush towards them before boarding. One man can be heard yelling: “Listen to me, everybody sit down, this is dangerous.”
Workers can then be seen securing the migrant boat to their own before ferrying the passengers one-by-one into the rescue vessel.
More than 1,000 migrants were rescued in a three-day operation
As of December 1, Italy has taken in more than 173,000 migrants attempting to cross to Europe in a boat this year, beating the previous record of 170,000 set in 2014.
The influx is putting an intense strain on the country’s asylum process and legal systems.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had threatened to veto the European Union’s budget to force other member states to take a greater share of responsibility and asylum seeks, but he is due to resign from his position after a landslide defeat in his constitutional referendum.
However, the Italian government has been accused of allegedly facilitating the transportation of illegal migrants into Europe, according to United Nations data.
Over the last two months, as many as 39,000 Africans have been smuggled from Libya into Italy by NGOs – with the permission of the Italian government – under the pretence of “rescue missions”.
Images from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) website shows ships leaving Italian ports, heading south towards Africa, stopping at the Libyan coast, picking up refugees and taking them 260 miles back to Italy.
Elizabeth Collett, the director of Migration Policy Institute Europe, said: “Smugglers no longer need large and robust boats.
"They need small boats that can make it a short distance and then have search-and-rescue pick them up.
“How do you break that cycle? You can’t stop search-and-rescue.”
Italian coast guard rescues migrants stranded off coast of Italy
In a response to the ever-worsening European migrant crisis, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has claimed migrants living in the UK will be forced to carry identification after Article 50 is triggered.
She said: “There will need to have some sort of documentation. We are not going to set it out yet.
“We are going to do it in a phased approach to ensure that we use all the technology advantages that we are increasingly able to harness to ensure that all immigration is carefully handled.”