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 

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 

In just under 24 hours, one of the poorest and toughest neighborhoods of Palermo mobilized to welcome and care for the 717 refugees, including survivors of shipwreck, who arrived in Palermo yesterday, according to La Repubblica. Volunteers from the Falsomiele neighborhood brought clothes, shoes and tee shirts to distribute to thewomen and children, people who arrived,  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.

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 

Two hundred arrivals at Pozzallo yesterday. Another 642 expected to land at Porto Empedocle today. The immigration center at the island of Lampedusa, which had been closed down because of the worst conditions, de-staffed and opened only for emergencies is now back in use, run by a non-profit. They have 250 beds but 1,215 people to house  Read More 

They risk everything to arrive with nothing as clandestine refugees who cross the Mediterranean, now become a graveyard for thousands like them.

This is a freeze frame from a video taken by Italian Coast Guard rescue and recovery divers of two refugees who died embraced on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea just off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Oct. 3, 2013, after the worst tragedy in those seas since 2000. Three hundred sixty-six people drowned together that day.
In this picture, two of them face each in what was left of their embrace. The empty space between them forms a heart. They died  Read More