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UN Agencies Urge Italy to Let Migrants Get off Rescue Boat

The Open Arms ship is moored at the Naples harbor, Italy, Thursday, June 20,2 019. The Spanish NGO migrant ship Open Arms is in Naples with activists speaking to media and the public to mark World Refugee Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The Open Arms ship is moored at the Naples harbor, Italy, Thursday, June 20,2 019. The Spanish NGO migrant ship Open Arms is in Naples with activists speaking to media and the public to mark World Refugee Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
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UN Agencies Urge Italy to Let Migrants Get off Rescue Boat

The Open Arms ship is moored at the Naples harbor, Italy, Thursday, June 20,2 019. The Spanish NGO migrant ship Open Arms is in Naples with activists speaking to media and the public to mark World Refugee Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The Open Arms ship is moored at the Naples harbor, Italy, Thursday, June 20,2 019. The Spanish NGO migrant ship Open Arms is in Naples with activists speaking to media and the public to mark World Refugee Day. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The UN migration and refugee agencies on Friday urged Italy's government to let 43 migrants from Libya disembark from a boat that had rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea.

Rome hasn't let the migrants off the Sea Watch 3 onto the Italian island of Lampedusa since the June 12 rescue.

Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration said Libya's capital had "offered its port to the Sea Watch. The Italian government said they should go to Tripoli."

Spokesman Babar Baloch of UN refugee agency UNHCR said: "Italy has the responsibility to let these people disembark," adding "no one should be returned back" to war-torn Libya.

"These desperate people need to disembark," Baloch said. "This is an obligation under international law."

Millman said Italian coast guard teams rescued and took another 80 people to Lampedusa overnight.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, alluding to the Dutch-flagged vessel, said the migrants "can go to the Netherlands."

Salvini says refugees escaping wars will be welcomed in Italy, but other migrants heading to Europe for economic reasons have no right to enter.

Salvini, who heads the right-wing and anti-immigration League, has adopted a hard stance on migration, refusing to open Italian ports to NGO boats that have rescued migrants in the Mediterranean.

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Zelenskiy Says Ready to Exchange N. Korean Soldiers for Ukrainians Held in Russia

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen (not pictured), amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Alina Smutko
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen (not pictured), amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Alina Smutko
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Zelenskiy Says Ready to Exchange N. Korean Soldiers for Ukrainians Held in Russia

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen (not pictured), amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Alina Smutko
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen (not pictured), amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Alina Smutko

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday Kyiv is ready to hand over North Korean soldiers to their leader Kim Jong Un if he can organize their exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
"In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It's only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others," Zelenskiy said on the social media platform X.
Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine had captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk region, the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers alive since their entry into the nearly three-year-old war last autumn.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 troops from Russia's ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow's forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence, Reuters reported.
Zelenskiy has said Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses.
"Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong Un's soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia," Zelenskiy said.
Zelenskiy posted a short video showing the interrogation of two men who are presented as North Korean soldiers. One of them is lying on a bed with bandaged hands, the other is sitting with a bandage on his jaw.
One of the men said through an interpreter that he did not know he was fighting against Ukraine and had been told he was on a training exercise.
He said he hid in a shelter during the offensive and was found a couple of days later. He said that if he was ordered to return to North Korea, he would, but said he was ready to stay in Ukraine if given the chance.
Reuters could not verify the video.
Zelenskiy said that for those North Korean soldiers who did not wish to return home, there may be other options available and "those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in the Korean (language) will be given that opportunity."
Zelenskiy provided no specific details.