More than 1,100 migrants rescued in two Italian Coast Guard operations

MADRID, 26 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

More than 1,100 migrants and refugees have been rescued in two operations coordinated by the Italian Coast Guard in recent hours, in an unprecedented intervention that coincides with the warnings of the new Italian Government against irregular immigration.

The Coast Guard has acknowledged in a statement that they were "complex" operations, aimed at saving migrants who had departed from the Libyan coast aboard boats supposedly destined for fishing.

The first of them was carried out about 35 miles from the coast. A Coast Guard ship took 416 people on board, while a Spanish patrol boat linked to the surveillance mission of the European agency Frontex recovered another 78.

On the other hand, already this Wednesday morning, the Italian coastguard recovered 663 migrants about 60 miles from the coast. "Two lifeless bodies were recovered," the institution reported.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, already warned on Tuesday in her first speech before the Chamber of Deputies that she would toughen immigration policies, under the pretext of fighting the mafias. Among her proposals is setting up centers outside of Italy that help verify the needs of migrants.

The League, which controls the Ministry of the Interior, already applied in its first stage in this department a doctrine of 'closed ports' for NGO ships, several of which are still active in the central Mediterranean. "This government wants the rules and borders to be followed," the leader of this party, Matteo Salvini, stressed on Twitter.

Italian authorities estimate that some 80,000 migrants have washed ashore this year. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), for its part, estimates that in this time some 1,300 people have perished along the way, died or disappeared in the central Mediterranean area.