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Posted: Nov 6, 2021 / 11:09 am CDT
Updated: 11/6/2021 / 11:20 a.m. CDT
MILAN (AP) – A humanitarian lifeboat stuck in the Mediterranean Sea of 800 migrants received a delivery of food and blankets on Saturday while waiting for permission to come ashore.
The German lifeboat Sea-Eye 4 set course for the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Thursday after it picked up 400 migrants from a sinking wooden boat, doubling the number of people on board.
Despite being just hours from Italy’s southernmost island, Sea-Eye charity officials said Italy had not yet assigned the ship a safe haven and that Malta shirked its responsibility by not responding to the distress signal of the ship in its search and rescue Wooden boat responded area.
Half of the passengers on board are minors, including children under 10 and five pregnant women, the charity said on Saturday. Doctors on board are treating 25 people for hypothermia, seasickness, and high blood pressure, as well as injuries that doctors say are compatible with torture during their escape.
“We urgently need to point out that these people should receive medical treatment on land as soon as possible … There must be no stalemate here,” says Dr. Christine Winkelmann, chairwoman of the German Doctors Association, which also operates the Sea-Eye 4.
The relief supplies were brought in by Dresden-based charity Mission Lifeline, which said more than 200 German cities have signaled their willingness to take in migrants.
The number of migrants venturing the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing has risen dramatically to over 54,000 this year, but still far from those of 2014-2017, when 120,000-180,000 people reached Italy annually, often in rickety smugglers’ boats.
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Follow all AP global migration stories at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.
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