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.



6.2 Quake Jolts Southwestern Mexico, No Damage or Casualties

People wait outside their homes and buildings after an alarm sounded warning of a tremor, in Mexico City, Mexico, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Henry Romero
People wait outside their homes and buildings after an alarm sounded warning of a tremor, in Mexico City, Mexico, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Henry Romero
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6.2 Quake Jolts Southwestern Mexico, No Damage or Casualties

People wait outside their homes and buildings after an alarm sounded warning of a tremor, in Mexico City, Mexico, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Henry Romero
People wait outside their homes and buildings after an alarm sounded warning of a tremor, in Mexico City, Mexico, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck a region in southwestern Mexico early Sunday, according to the United States Geological Survey, causing no serious damage or casualties.
It said the quake was centered 21 kilometers (13 miles) southeast of Aquila near the boundary of Colima and Michoacán states at a depth of 34 kilometers (21 miles), The Associated Press reported.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on social media platform X that the quake prompted emergency response teams to review their protocol.
“There are no new developments,” she wrote. Mexico’s Social Security Institute said there were no reports of damage in the capital of Mexico City, some 600 kilometers (372 miles) east of the temblor's epicenter — near the mountainous village of Coalcomán, Michoacán.
Some people in Coalcomán and in Uruapan, the second largest city in Michoacán, posted surveillance footage on social media time-stamped at 2:32 a.m. local time that showed buildings sway and parked cars shake. Others reported that they ran into the streets to wait for the shaking to stop.
Mexico’s national seismological service said that as of 9 a.m. local time on Sunday, there had been 329 aftershocks. It put the magnitude at 6.1. It is not unusual for preliminary measurements to vary.
Mexico is no stranger to earthquakes because of its position near colliding sections of the earth’s crust. In the past 40 years, there have been at least seven magnitude 7 or greater temblors, killing around 10,000 people — most of them in a devastating 1985 8.0 quake.