Italy to Boost Patrols in Mediterranean 'Sea of Death'
Italy on Monday was set to triple sea patrols amid a growing influx of asylum seekers making perilous crossings, as Prime Minister Enrico Letta said the Mediterranean should not be a "sea of death".
The plan is for a large-scale deployment of ships, planes, helicopters and reportedly even Predator drones in a show of force also intended to put further pressure on European states to help.
The move was triggered by a shipwreck tragedy off the island of Lampedusa earlier this month in which more than 360 migrants drowned and comes as coffins of victims of the disaster were prepared for burial.
"We discussed the tragedy of Lampedusa," Letta said following previously scheduled talks in Rome with his Finnish counterpart Jyrki Katainen.
"I explained the sense of our military humanitarian mission that will be operational from tomorrow. It is unacceptable that the Mediterranean become a sea of death," he said.
Letta, who has asked for the issue to be on the agenda at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels next week, was due to preside over a cabinet meeting later on Monday to agree the details of the mission.
"It is a deployment that will allow us to ask the European Union to do the same," Defense Minister Mario Mauro said ahead of the meeting.
Italy currently has three navy vessels, six coast guard patrol boats and six border guard patrol boats in the area around Lampedusa, as well as helicopters and planes from each of the three agencies.
The biggest Italian warship in the area is the Espero, a frigate with a crew of 225 men and women, a helicopter and a clinic.
Two border guard Piaggio P-180 planes also scan the sea with hi-tech sensors, although officers say they are frequently overwhelmed by arrivals.
Ministers said the mission would have a humanitarian as well as a security role, following complaints by migrant rights advocates who said it reflected a "Fortress Europe" mentality.
The U.N. refugee agency estimates 32,000 asylum seekers have landed in Italy and Malta this year -- many of them from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria.
The numbers have increased drastically since the Arab Spring revolts in North Africa in 2011 and there is a particularly serious problem in Libya which is unable to control its maritime frontier.
"We have a non-state like Libya in front of us," Mauro said, adding: "What is going on in Syria will make millions of people flee for decades."
Letta is also planning to request that an Italian be appointed to head up the EU's Frontex border agency and that the service have an operational office in Italy, Italian media reported.
Frontex is based in Poland and headed up by executive director Ilkka Laitinen from Finland.
Meanwhile a new boatload of 137 migrants was taken by coast guards to the tiny island of Lampedusa, where 364 migrants drowned on October 3 in Italy's worst ever refugee shipwreck disaster.
The bodies from that tragedy, which was followed by another one off Malta last Friday in which at least 36 people perished, were being taken to Porto Empedocle in Sicily on Monday for burial.
Relatives of the victims and members of the Eritrean diaspora who flew in from around Europe were seen crying over the coffins as they were loaded into a ship in images shown on television.
"What we have experienced in these days is a painful chapter that calls for responsibility from Europe," Lampedusa mayor Giusi Nicolini said.
The new arrivals on Monday were all Syrian asylum seekers and are believed to have arrived from Libya.
They have been taken to an overcrowded refugee center on Lampedusa, where some of the 155 survivors from the disaster are also being housed.
Over the weekend, Italian border guards also said they had picked up 14 Eritrean migrants trying to cross Alpine passes into Switzerland.
The migrants had all come from Lampedusa, which is one of the biggest entry points for irregular migration into the European Union.
Source: Agence France Presse
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