Theresa Maggio

Their raft deflated and at least twenty of them drowned while help was on the way in the form of the rescue ship Siem Pilot, according to the Giornale di Sicilia today.
The 366 survivors ( imagine 366 people crowded on a single rubber raft!) were from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Nigeria. 259 of them were men, 82 were women and 25 minors. Read More 

More than 2,000 migrants arrived on Sicily since yesterday, according to La Repubblica. This morning the ship Siem Pilot brought 1,040 of them to Palermo, mostly men from sub Saharan African nations. Among them were 120 unaccompanied minors. At Trapani 656 migrants arrived including a baby born aboard the rescue ship. Meanwhile 496 migrants arrived yesterday at Pozzallo, Sicily,with four presumed traffickers among them.  Read More 

Click on the caption to see the brief video if the embedded video does not appear here.
Baby Manuela was the second baby born aboard the Italian Navy ship Bettica. She was born July 5. Can you imagine taking the dangerous raft ride across the ocean about to give birth?! A baby boy named Francois Manuel was born aboard the Bettica on June 27 2016. Read More 

From La Repubblica:
The desperate crossings continue without letup. Today 4,500 migrants were saved at sea and along with one corpse were brought to Sicily. THe Italian Navy and Coast Guard, with an assist from a Frontex Euro border guards) ship and a non-governmental organization ship saved 4500 hundred lives in 35 rescue operations in the Straitof Sicily today.  Read More 

From La Repubblica:
PALERMO - Noureddin Atta, a confessed human trafficker from Eritrea arrested in Italy in 2015, said that sometimes the migrants don't have the money for the trip across the desert, or they make it across the Sahara but cannot find the money to cross the Mediterranean. These people are consigned to Egyptians who pay around $15,000 per migrant. They come prepared to harvest organs and transport them in thermal bags. Read More 

From The Guardian:
Italy has begun to salvage the bodies of people killed in the Mediterranean’s deadliest
modern shipwreck, in an operation that experts say is of historic scale.

The Italian navy has pulled the boat to the surface, more than 14 months after it sank in April 2015, killing about 800 people who were sailing  Read More 

From La Repubblica:
A Zodiac rubber raft full of immigrants flipped over 20 miles from the Libyan coast today and ten women were drowned, while 107 survivors were saved by the coast guard. A new tragedy that happened the same day in which the sunken fishing boat that went down 18 April 2015 in the Strait of Sicily,  Read More 

The last two rescues were the ship's 14th and 15th.
From a gray rubber raft they saved 132 migrants: of them 1 were women and 31 children, 28 of whom were unaccompanied, the youngest ten years old. Most were from Guinea-Conakry, Ivory Coast and Mali. They spent between three days and and 2 weeks in a hangar on the  Read More 

From The Guardian:
Ship crews have pulled more than 2,000 refugees from overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean, Italy’s coastguard has said, as people-smugglers stepped up operations during two consecutive days of good weather.

More than 7,100 people have now been rescued from international waters since Thursday, many of them on the dangerous journey from Libya.

 Read More 

More than nine out of 10 refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe through Italy this year are travelling alone, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said on Tuesday, warning of the “appalling” risks children face while escaping conflict and poverty.
Click on the photo caption to read the story in today's online The Guardian.

Along with the thousands of decent people who risk their lives to get to Europe by boat or raft come a small number of Nigerian criminals. In Palermo they congregate in the Ballaro market and co exist with the native Cosa Nostra in an uneasy relationship. Click on the caption to read the story in The Guardian. Read More