Theresa Maggio

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 

They left on two rubber rafts from Tripoli but they came from Senegal, Nigeria, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Siera Leone and the Ivory Coast. All men but for one woman ho had married her husband, who accompanied her, this year. The immigrants were piled on top of each other in the  Read More 

Mayor Orlando says Europe has washed its hands of the tragedy and abandoned Sicily and Italy to its own devices when it comes to handling the huge continuing wave of refugees.
Three rescued Somalis, picked up by Maltese mercantile ship, arrived at Palermo and were hospitalized for health problems. Altogether 91 Somalis arrived at Palermo's  Read More 

Last week Sicily was cut in two when an overpass on the Palermo-Catania Highway A19 broke up. One of the pilons sustaining the bridge ceded to a mudslide, leaned like the Tower of Pisa and is now pressing against other pilons. Engineers say the bridge will have to be demolished and rebuilt. Sicily has  Read More 

After the crumbling of several buildings in the neglected Vucciria, the city has finally decided to spend some time and money fixing the historic market site up. It will take a year, with a firm that "works very fast", to pull up the limestone paving stones, work on the light and telephone cables and  Read More 

Sicilian police have jailed 15 Moslems accused of throwing more than ten Christians overboard into the open sea. They were a hundred moslems and Christians traveling together on a trafficker's rubber raft seeking to reach Sicily ( and Europe) when a fight over religion broke out.

A thousand refugees are expected to land in Sicily today.  Read More 

Once again, there are now 1400 refugees and immigrants for whatever reason in an intake camp with only 250 beds. The Lampedusa holding center had been closed last year because of scandalous overcrowding, poor conditions, bad management and degrading treatment of arrivals (making people strip naked publicly to be sprayed for scabies and such). Volunteers --  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.