Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister has refused to offer safe harbour to 64 refugees rescued off the coast of Libya.
The people brought to safety by the German humanitarian group Sea Eye were saved from a rubber dinghy off the coast of Zuwarah, west of the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
They included 20 women, five children and a newborn baby, the group said.
Sea Eye tweeted to say its rescue ship, theAlan Kurdi, picked them up after Libyan authorities couldn’t be reached.
The group asked Italy or Malta to open a port to the ship.
But Mr Salvini, Italy’s anti-migration deputy prime minister, said the Alan Kurdi, like other private rescue ships, would not be welcome in Italy.
“A ship with a German flag, German NGO, German ship owner, captain from Hamburg. It responded in Libyan waters and asks for a safe port. Good, go to Hamburg,” Mr Salvini said.
Both Italy and Malta have refused to accept ships that humanitarian groups have patrolling the Mediterranean Sea, leading to numerous delays in getting rescued refugees to land while European countries haggle over which will take them in.
Sea Eye said another 50 refugees it has been searching for since Monday remain missing.
It comes after another aid organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, was forced to end its refugee rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea.
The group and its partner, SOS Méditerranée, said the rescue ship Aquarius would no longer be used to save refugees travelling one of the deadliest migration routes in the world from north Africa to Italy.
So far this year, at least 598 people have died in the Mediterranean, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
