Theresa Maggio

For its eighth and ninth rescies the French ship Aquarius bellonging to the non profit SOS Mediterranee rescued 253 shipwreck victims on two rubber rafts. The first mission saved 137 immigrants including six women and6 children under 16 years old. The were mostly from Guinea-Conakry and Mali. Two of the women were dehydrated and very weak. At least three people had broken arms. Doctors on board said at least one broken arm was due to maltreatment and torture. As soon as these immigrants were on board the Aquarius went to its next rescue, of 116 people on another sinking raft, including 16 women and a three-year-old child.
Then the Aquarius was asked by the naval center in Rome to welcome aboard 115 other migrants who were saved by the German navy in order to take them to Italy. Read More 

You may be wondering why I post so much about African immigrants landing in Sicily and what they go through. It's because I spent six months in Palermo and talked to many of them and heard the harrowing stories, a young guy in a shipwreck who saw his brother go overboard and drown, a  Read More 

From today's La Repubblica:
Merchant ship and Italian Coast Guard ships carried 998 immigrants toward Italian shores this morning. They had left from the Egyptian coast. The Coast Guard ship Peluso brought 342 to safety at Augusta, Sicily, they were many men, women and children. The immigrants who landed at Augusta had gone to sea squashed  Read More 

With the good weather more and more rubber rafts and big old fishing boats full of desperate immigrants take off from Libyan shores to tackle the crossing to Sicily. Here is a photo tweeted by a volunteer on the rescue ship Aquarios operated by the group SOS Mediterrane`. The rescue ships had already taken  Read More 

From The Guardian:
"The chances of finding legitimate work – with youth unemployment in Italy at 37% – are slim, and his asylum application is unlikely to succeed: 66% of claims by Gambians last year were rejected, according to Eurostat.

Across Italy, migrants spend their days in parks, or loiter outside bus and train stations, homesick and shocked  Read More 

The weather is clearing in the Mediterranean Sea so immigrants' voyages of despair are picking up. Three Italian ships rescued 1,664 people from nine rubber rafts in trouble. The ship Bettica aided five rafts saving a total of 588 people. The ship Bergamini saved 476 people from two rafts ( can you imagine more than 200 people on a rubber raft????!!!) The ship Grecale picked up 600 immigrants from two rafts and is headed toward Trapani, Sicily with them. Read More 

from the Giornale di Sicilia:
249 African immigrants on an old fishing boat were saved last night by the Italian coast guard ship Dattilo which was sent to pick them up after Roman authorities received an emergency satellite cell phone call from the foundering fishing boat. They were 200 nautical miles east of Sicily but within  Read More 

A merchant ship saved 26 people off a half sunken raft miles off the Libyan coast but survivors say 80 people were lost at sea yesterday.

Remember my blog about Yusupha Susso, the young Gambian refugee in Palermo who was shot in the head by a mafioso who wanted to prove he owned the territory the young man and his friends were standing in? Yusupha survived after five days in an induced coma. He speaks five languages, is the son  Read More 

The caption says:
"Yannis Behrakis/REUTERS
Some 500 refugees, not shown, were feared dead after a shipwreck in the Mediterranean."

Why do you think the Daily News used a photo of white people in trouble at sea when the disappeared immigrants were all from African countries? There are plenty of file photos of black immigrants being saved.

Here is the story from the NY Daily News: Read More 

From the Giornale di Sicilia:
They said they left Libya on a rubber raft carrying 130-140 people. 108 f them were rescued by the Ship Aquarius of the SOS Mediterranean non profit group. Two drowned, six bodies were found on the bottom of the raft which had bent into a V shape, disabled, the motor  Read More