Italy fears surge of migrants will only grow

CATANIA, Sicily — Italy struggled to cope with a surging number of desperate and sick migrants arriving on its shores Wednesday, deeply concerned that the numbers will only continue to multiply as the summer approaches.

Nearly 1,000 migrants came ashore on Wednesday alone, many of them suffering from scabies, which prompted health officials to put them in isolation under a tent on the main deck of the Italian navy ship that rescued them.

Wednesday’s new surge came as Italian officials were still dealing with the aftermath of the disastrous shipwreck off its shores Sunday that killed up to 850 people — the worst single death toll among refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

“We prefer to die trying [to migrate] than stay back there and die,” Emmanual, a Nigerian migrant who recently arrived in Sicily, told the Associated Press. “Stay at home and get shot dead or maybe burnt to death, I just prefer to die while trying to survive.”  Other migrants told similar stories of desperate survival — and of witnessing grisly, watery death all around them.

Because Italy is the first European Union country where the migrants set foot, they stay in reception centers, sometimes for years, while their requests or appeals for asylum are processed.

Migrants deemed ineligible for asylum are ordered expelled, but many run away and head to Northern Europe to reach relatives. Said told Save the Children that he was heading to Norway to live with relatives in Oslo.

As the migrant problem seemed to grow by the day, Italy pressed for a coordinated international military intervention and other measures by the E.U. and the United Nations to stem the surging tide of beleaguered refugees reaching its shores.

Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said that Italy was willing to lead any military intervention if it was carried out as an international endeavor backed by the United Nations.

“We know where the smugglers keep their boats, where they gather,” Pinotti said in Rome. “The plans for military intervention are there.”

The vast majority of smugglers’ boats are arriving in Italy from Libya, where lawlessness has taken root and Islamist militants and people traffickers have gathered strength after the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011.  Read More at Washingtonpost

Italy fears surge of migrants will only grow

A global surge in refugees leaves Europe struggling to cope