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.



South Korea Plans to Overhaul Airport Structures after Fatal Jeju Air Crash

The wreckage of the Jeju Air aircraft that went off the runway and crashed lies at Muan International Airport, in Muan, South Korea, December 30, 2024. (Reuters)
The wreckage of the Jeju Air aircraft that went off the runway and crashed lies at Muan International Airport, in Muan, South Korea, December 30, 2024. (Reuters)
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South Korea Plans to Overhaul Airport Structures after Fatal Jeju Air Crash

The wreckage of the Jeju Air aircraft that went off the runway and crashed lies at Muan International Airport, in Muan, South Korea, December 30, 2024. (Reuters)
The wreckage of the Jeju Air aircraft that went off the runway and crashed lies at Muan International Airport, in Muan, South Korea, December 30, 2024. (Reuters)

South Korea said it planned to improve the structures housing the antennas that guide landings at its airports this year after December's fatal crash of a Jeju Air plane, which skidded off the runway and burst into flames after hitting such a structure.

The country's transport ministry, which has been inspecting safety conditions at airlines and airports since the Boeing 737-800 jet crashed at the southwestern Muan airport, announced the move to change the so-called "localizer" structures on Monday.

Seven domestic airports, including Muan, were found to have embankments or foundations made of concrete or steel that needed to be changed, the ministry said in a statement.

It added that it would prepare measures to improve the structures by this month and it aimed to complete the improvements by the end of 2025. It did not provide details of the planned improvements.

Aviation safety experts have criticized the placement of the embankment at Muan airport and said it likely raised the death toll of the crash, which killed 179 of the 181 people on board.

The government has also finished its inspection of six domestic airlines flying Boeing 737-800s, and found violations at some operators including exceeding the period of inspection pre- and post-flight, and non-compliance with procedures to resolve plane defects or passenger boarding.

The transport ministry declined to comment on whether Jeju Air was among the airlines where violations were found. A Jeju Air spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.

A special safety inspection of the country's major airport facilities will also take place between Jan. 13-21, the ministry statement said.

The government also extended the shutdown of Muan airport to Jan. 19, the ministry said in a separate statement.