100 Migrants Rescued Off Lampedusa Coast

Spanish NGO Open Arms and the Italian coast guard rescued more than 100 migrants at sea off the southern coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, while also recovering one dead body off the boat.

The skipper of the Open Arms rescue boat Astral gave life jackets and assisted the migrants on board the drifting wooden boat before vessels from the Italian coast guard reached the rescue place and helped on the operation, taking the rescued migrants to the island of Lampedusa.

Migrants included 6 women, 4 children and two elderly men. The rescued migrants included Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians, the NGO Open Arms said in a statement.

A controversial plan in Italy to set up detention camps in Albania for migrants picked up at sea was delayed on August 1, with a source close to the matter saying it was a few weeks behind schedule.

Search And Rescue Coordinator Of Mission 111 Of Astral, Esther Camps, saying: "Once we arrived we saw this boat with 110 people and a corpse in the bottom part of the boat as this boat has two decks, a person who died was inside. We started to secure everyone, some people fell to the water and we secured them as well. And during the operation, two vessels from the Italian coast guard appeared and they helped us in the operation. We finished a few minutes ago disembarking everyone and now these people are heading to the port of Lampedusa."

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had announced Aug. 1 as the inauguration date for the facilities during a visit to Albania in June. Earlier, her government had hoped to make them operational by spring.

Meloni's right-wing government signed a deal with Albania last year for the camps as part of its efforts to curb immigration, saying they would process some 36,000 migrants a year via two facilities, one at the port of Shengjin and another in Gjader.

Opposition parties and human rights groups denounced the plan, which resembles a now-abandoned similar migrant deportation deal between Britain and Rwanda.