Italy: Coast Guard Rescues 300 Migrants from Stormy Seas

Migrants walk on the quay after disembarking in Roccella Jonica, Calabria region, southern Italy, early Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Migrants walk on the quay after disembarking in Roccella Jonica, Calabria region, southern Italy, early Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
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Italy: Coast Guard Rescues 300 Migrants from Stormy Seas

Migrants walk on the quay after disembarking in Roccella Jonica, Calabria region, southern Italy, early Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Migrants walk on the quay after disembarking in Roccella Jonica, Calabria region, southern Italy, early Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The Italian Coast Guard has rescued more than 300 young men and boys, most of them from Egypt, from a storm-battered fishing boat in rough seas off the southern “toe” of Italy’s mainland.

The rescue began Saturday night and ended early Sunday when the 303 migrants, soaked and shivering, stepped on to the port of Roccella Jonica in the Calabria region, The Associated Press reported.

While most migrants seeking to reach Italy in the central Mediterranean depart from Libya or Tunisia, authorities say an increasing number of traffickers' boats aiming for European shores are plying a route that begins in Turkey and ends at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.

Those rescued from traffickers' unseaworthy rubber dinghies and wooden boats that depart from North Africa are usually taken to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island, or to ports in Sicily. But those from Turkey are generally taken to Calabria or Puglia in the “heel” of the Italian mainland.

In Roccella Jonica, Red Cross volunteers early Sunday handed the migrants plastic clogs, blankets, food and protective face masks as part of COVID-19 precautions. Authorities recently set up a tent structure to serve as temporary housing but it's only supposed to hold up to 120 people.

As of Nov. 12, 57,833 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea so far this year.

In 2020, more than 31,000 arrived. In 2019, when anti-migrant leader Matteo Salvini used his post as interior minister to try to thwart charity boats from disembarking people they rescued at sea, just under 10,000 arrived.



Medvedev Says Russia Seeks Victory, Not Compromise, in Talks with Ukraine 

Vladimir Medinsky (3rd from L), head of the Russian delegation, delivers a statement to the press after a second round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, on June 2, 2025. (AFP)
Vladimir Medinsky (3rd from L), head of the Russian delegation, delivers a statement to the press after a second round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, on June 2, 2025. (AFP)
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Medvedev Says Russia Seeks Victory, Not Compromise, in Talks with Ukraine 

Vladimir Medinsky (3rd from L), head of the Russian delegation, delivers a statement to the press after a second round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, on June 2, 2025. (AFP)
Vladimir Medinsky (3rd from L), head of the Russian delegation, delivers a statement to the press after a second round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, on June 2, 2025. (AFP)

Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory.

"The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else's delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime," the hawkish deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council said on Telegram.

"That's what the Russian Memorandum published yesterday is about."

Medvedev was referring to a set of Russian demands presented to Ukraine at talks in Istanbul on Monday.

They included handing over more territory, becoming a neutral country, accepting limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and holding new parliamentary and presidential elections.

At the talks, which lasted only an hour, the two sides agreed on a new prisoner-of-war swap and an exchange of 12,000 dead soldiers, but not on the ceasefire that Ukraine and its allies are pressing Russia to accept.

Medvedev added, in an apparent response to Ukraine's weekend strikes on Russian strategic bomber bases, that Moscow would take revenge. "Retribution is inevitable," he said.

"Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be."