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.



Avalanche Hits Group of Skiers in Italy's Piedmont Alps, Killing 3

Birds fly as the snow-capped peak of Mount Terminillo is seen from Rome during sunset, Italy, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Birds fly as the snow-capped peak of Mount Terminillo is seen from Rome during sunset, Italy, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
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Avalanche Hits Group of Skiers in Italy's Piedmont Alps, Killing 3

Birds fly as the snow-capped peak of Mount Terminillo is seen from Rome during sunset, Italy, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Birds fly as the snow-capped peak of Mount Terminillo is seen from Rome during sunset, Italy, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

An avalanche hit a group of five skiers in Italy’s northern Piedmont region on Sunday, killing three of them, rescuers said.
Two survived and were transported to the hospital by helicopter, The Associated Press reported.
The avalanche hit around midday on the eastern face of Punta Valgrande, a summit on the border between Italy and Switzerland.
The skiers who died were dragged downhill for several hundred meters (yards), suffering fatal injuries.
An alert had been issued in the area above 2,100 meters (6,900 feet), warning of “considerable danger of avalanches.”