ITALY-MIGRANTS/LAMPEDUSA Migrant influx causes overcrowding in Italian island centres

Record ID: 348858

  • Title: ITALY-MIGRANTS/LAMPEDUSA Migrant influx causes overcrowding in Italian island centres
  • Date: 19th February 2015
  • Summary: LAMPEDUSA, ITALY (FEBRUARY 19, 2015) (REUTERS) HARBOUR OF LAMPEDUSA BOATS IN HARBOUR ITALIAN FLAG ON BOAT ENTRANCE TO RECEPTION CENTRE WITH FLOWERS ON FENCED GATE FLOWERS ON FENCED GATE / MIGRANTS INSIDE RECEPTION CENTRES MIGRANTS INSIDE RECEPTION CENTRE SEEN FROM FENCED GATE RECEPTION CENTRE VARIOUS OF MIGRANTS QUEUING INSIDE RECEPTION CENTRE WEARING COVERS, TOWELS AND SC
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAF0O8M3UQRVLPNH6JHUA71AMVY
  • Story Text: Over 600 migrants remained in Lampedusa's reception centre on Thursday (February 19) after thousands were rescued from the sea in more than ten operations carried out by the Italian coast guard in recent days.
    Rescue personnel have been assisting the migrants at Sicilian ports before placing them on buses and driving them to local medical centres, but the island's reception centre is struggling to cope with the huge influx.
    Some migrants, including women and children, were seen leaving the perimeter of the reception centre through a hole in the fence surrounding it, and climbing up Lampedusa's rocky hills. Others were contacting their families using a mobile phone to inform them that they were still alive.
    A 15-year-old migrant from Somalia, wandering around the island's hills, said he had already spent nearly half of his life living in a refugee camp in Kenya with his family.
    "Me, I have been living for seven years in a refugee camp. My mother, my brother and my sister are living in a refugee camp but I want help," said Abdullahib Abda Abdullahji, who aims to leave Italy for Norway.
    Another young Somali migrant said he had travelled across Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya, where soldiers at the borders would ask for money and threaten to shoot people, before embarking on his sea journey.
    "The, the way we travelled here is very, very dangerous. Sometimes you get killed, sometimes you get injured. It is (the journey) very long also and the army of the borders are very dangerous," said 20-year-old Labaar.
    Labaar said the most dangerous part of his journey was crossing the Sahara desert, which began in Sudan. Migrants were driven in overcrowded vehicles for 12 days with barely any water or food. In Libya, at least 30 of them were loaded onto a land cruiser pickup truck. With barely any space to move, he said, migrants would fall off the truck and be left to die.
    His journey across the desert ended in Libya, where Labaar said he was locked into a small room with 25 other migrants for 17 days with no beds or toilets. Those who protested would be taken out. Some would never return.
    After 17 days, they were transferred onto a ship, which broke down only a few hours after leaving the Libyan coast.
    "The guy who was driving (the ship), the guy who was driving said, he said: 'Sorry, sorry, guys. We are going to die, all of us.' 'Why why?' we said. He said 'The boat has stopped working.' So what we can do? Even me, I can't swim, I can't swim," Labaar said.
    But despite risking his life on numerous occasions throughout the journey, Labaar said he had had no choice but to leave Somalia.
    "'My child, Why do you go? Why you go?' I said 'I can't live there because there, if you live, you can get two, two ways, two ways: you are going to be a soldier, you are going to be an Islamist. So I don't want to die earlier time," he said.
    Lampedusa's proximity to North Africa has made it a main target for migrants fleeing in boats across the Mediterranean.
    In 2014, there were approximately 300,000 irregular crossings into the European Union, with United Nations data showing at least 218,000 people entering via the Mediterranean.
    A record number of migrants look set to flow into Europe this year, with human traffickers becoming increasingly aggressive as they take advantage of chaos in Africa and the Middle East, according to Frontex, the European Union's border cooperation agency.
    The Mediterranean crossings claimed an estimated 3,300 lives last year, and earlier this month more than 300 people are believed to have died after leaving Libya on inflatable rafts.
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