Italy asks migrants on rescue boats to 'go further north!'

Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing prime minister, is forcing migrant rescue ships to dock farther and farther north along Italy’s coastline, causing them to make lengthy trips that increase their operating costs and limit their ability to keep saving lives.

After picking up 69 migrants south of Malta on Tuesday, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) vessel Geo Barents was instructed to head to the northern port of La Spezia.

The non-governmental organisation, which later conducted two more rescues, stating that there were 237 migrants aboard, stated that it would take 100 hours of navigation to get there from where they were.

They had sailed from Libya, just like the majority of those who had been saved in the central Mediterranean.

The farthest and most northern port that Italy has given an NGO ship is La Spezia. It advised other ships to dock in the eastern Adriatic ports of Ancona and Ravenna, as well as Livorno in Tuscany, this month.