Theresa Maggio

Front page news in today's La Repubblica Palermo on line edition:
Latest wave of immigrants. Between two and three thousand immigrants in rubber rafts and old boats asked for rescue from Italian and European agencies spread out across the Strait of Sicily. More than 20 requests came into the Italian coast guard which coordinates the  Read More 

The Norwegian ship Siem Pilot docked at Catania and offloaded the 312 survivors of yet another Mediterranean crossing, and 49 corpses of those who died suffocated in the hold of the old fishing vessel they were on. Catania Mayor Enzo Bianco proclaimed a city-wide day of mourning and promised a dignified burial for all the bodies.

There 13 dead bodies aboard an overloaded boat full of immigrants aided yesterday in the Strait of Sicily by the Irish military boat "L. E. Niamh.". On the refugee boat were 522 people, and the corpses lay among them. The causes of the deaths of the 13 were not clear. Besides this operation, yesterday saw another four  Read More 

The Italian Coast Guard ship Dattilo moored at the port of Palermo and disembarked the 717 refugees saved from a Thursday shipwreck off the shores of Libya along with 12 cadavers. The Dattilo picked up the victims and the survivors along with the ship Corso and two motorboats that left from Lampedusa.

450 landed safely today at Augusta, Sicily and another 200 at Pozzallo, Sicily.

The Worst Ever Migrant Tragedy. From La Repubblica:
The traffickers had packed more than 700 immigrants like animals on a 20-meter old wooden fishing boat and set them sailing across the Mediterranean from a point east of Tripoli, Libya. One of them had a satellite telephone and alerted the Italian National Center of the Coast  Read More 

1,169 immigrants expected in Palermo alone by tomorrow morning. After the winter hiatus, immigrants are making the dangerous trip in unseaworthy boats and rafts again. More than ten rescue operations in the Canale di Sicilia today alone.

From today's La Repubblica: A boat full of immigrants capsized 80 miles off the coast of Libya and nine people drowned trying to get to Europe. The Italian coast guard saved the 144 shipwreck survivors and put them on a military boat bound for Sicily while Coast Guard members stayed to look for more survivors or  Read More 

They were taken to Porto Empedocle, near Agrigento, Sicily. Read it in today's La Repubblica.

More than 300 dead. The 29 bodies were just those that were recovered. There four gommoni, large rubber rafts, in the worst seas the Italian coast guard had ever seen. The survivors said they were forced to leave Libya at gunpoint. The 29 bodies were PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN RESCUED off the coast of Libya but died  Read More 

Twenty-nine people died of exposure to the cold on a rescue from the sea. They died while being rushed to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island closest to Africa. They were rescued from some of the worst conditions at sea, waves twenty feet high.

Update: here is the story in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/ Read More