Interior Ministry News

Britain said on Tuesday it would return asylum seekers to a barge on its southern coast as opponents of the policy argued in court that such housing was unlawful.In an embarrassment for the Conservative government's immigration policy, legionella bacteria was detected in the water system of the Bibby Stockholm barge in August, just days after dozens of asylum seekers had been moved on.Following safety tests, the government has started sending letters to asylum seekers confirming they will be moved to the barge, an interior ministry spokesperson said.The government wants to cut the 8 million po

Italian authorities have impounded a vessel operated by a Spanish charity, the group said on Thursday, after it carried out multiple rescues of migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.The Open Arms group said in a statement it had completed three rescues on Saturday picking up 176 people at sea, which included more than 90 unaccompanied minors. The boat docked on Wednesday in the central Italian port of Carrara to disembark the migrants.The vessel was placed under detention for 20 days after the authorities questioned the captain and the head of mission over what happened, Open Arms said, adding they expected to receive a fine worth between 3…

Britain has removed migrants from a residential barge less than a week after they moved in after Legionella bacteria was found in the water supply, the government said on Friday.Britain had begun moving some migrants on to the large Bibby Stockholm barge on its southern coast at the beginning of the week as part of its high-profile strategy to deter asylum seekers from arriving in the country. The policy had divided opinion, with ministers saying they wanted to offer basic and not luxurious accommodation to help save costs, while human rights campaigners said the offer was inhumane. "Environmental samples from the water system on the Bibby Stockholm (barge) have shown levels of legionella bacteria which require further investigation…

Italian authorities on Wednesday said forty-one migrants are thought to have died in a shipwreck last week in the central Mediterranean, according to accounts by survivors who have been taken to the island of Lampedusa.Local public prosecutor Salvatore Vella confirmed media reports that four people who survived the shipwreck told rescuers they were on a boat carrying 45 people, including three children.Vella's office has opened an investigation into the incident.The 7-meter-long boat set off on Thursday morning from Tunisia's Sfax…

A German charity said on Friday its rescue ship was impounded by Italian authorities for breaching tougher migration rules introduced by the country's right-wing government as part of a crackdown on NGO sea-rescue activities.The Mare*Go organization said it disobeyed instructions to take 36 migrants it picked up on Thursday to the Sicilian port of Trapani, taking them instead to Lampedusa island, saving itself hours of navigation."The rescue ship is blocked for 20 days" in Lampedusa, the NGO in a statement, adding it would also "likely face a fine because we broke the new Italian Decree Law" sponsored by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.Noting that Trapani was 32 hours away from the location where the migrants were picked up…

Britain said on Wednesday it had leased a barge to house 500 migrants on its southern coast as part of efforts to reduce the use of costly hotels as temporary accommodation while asylum claims are being processed.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made cracking down on illegal migration one of his top priorities ahead of an election expected next year and has set out plans to bar the entry of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the Channel.The vessel, the Bibby Stockholm, will be berthed in Portland Port in Dorset and will accommodate 500 single adult males, Britain's interior ministry said.Migrants will be moved aboard "in the coming months" and it will be operational for at least 18 months…

Eight migrants were found dead, and around 40 were rescued by the Italian coast guard overnight on a ship off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, Italian media reported on Friday. The rescuers took the survivors to the main port on Lampedusa, which lies to the south of Sicily, news agency ANSA said. Italian authorities escorted another three stricken vessels carrying 156 people to Lampedusa, one of the main entry points for people trying to reach Europe. Italy is facing a surge in arrivals from North Africa.

Italy's new anti-immigration decree that aims to curtail NGO rescue ships should be scrapped as it violates international law, a top Catholic bishop said, in an unusually blunt attack against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government.The decree, which was introduced in December, forces charity-run ships to request a port and sail to it "without delay" after a rescue, rather than remain at sea looking for other migrant boats in distress, as generally used to occur."The fate of the decree should only be its repeal…

The Italian government has rejected a request from a ship run by Doctors Without Borders non-governmental organisation (NGO) to assign a safe port closer to the place where it rescued 73 migrants, an NGO official said on Sunday.Italy's interior ministry did not comment on the issue.The dispute is part of a broader tug-of-war between Italy's right-wing government and NGOs over where to disembark migrants saved in the Mediterranean sea.On Saturday Doctor Without Borders' ship Geo Barents received permission from Rome to dock to Ancona port, which is in central Italy and on the country's east coast, far away from Sicily where NGO boats…

Sea rescue charities on Thursday condemned tough anti-immigration measures recently introduced by the Italian government, saying the new rules will cause ever more deaths in the Mediterranean.The decree, which was introduced last week, says charity ships must request a port and sail to it "without delay" after a rescue, rather than remain at sea looking for other migrant boats in distress, as it now happens.Ship captains risk fines of 50,000 euros ($52,760) and having their boats…

Three migrants rescued in Spain's Canary Islands, after apparently enduring an 11-day journey from Nigeria crouched on the rudder of a fuel tanker, should now be returned home under stowaway laws, a police spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday. In a photograph distributed on Twitter by the Spanish coast guard on Monday, the three stowaways are shown crouching on the rudder under the hull, just above the waterline of the Alithini II.The 183-metre ship, sailing under a Maltese flag, arrived in Las Palmas in Gran Canaria after setting out from Lagos in Nigeria on Nov.

Egyptian authorities seized more than 18 million narcotic tabs hidden in three containers in the Mediterranean seaport of Alexandria, the interior ministry said on Monday.The 34-tonne cargo was on board a ship that docked at the northern port in transit before departing to an unspecified country, the ministry said on its official Facebook page.The cargo was worth 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($61.22 million), it added.($1 = 24.5000 Egyptian pounds)(Reuters - Reporting By Moaz Abd-Alaziz; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Britain says it has canceled a contract with P&O Ferries "with immediate effect" in its latest action against the DP World-owned company following its decision to axe hundreds of staff earlier this year.The Home Office (interior ministry) said it was ending its agreement with the firm to provide contingency travel services to "juxtaposed ports" where British staff operate border controls in Belgium and France to check passengers and freight destined for Britain.It comes after P&O Ferries…

Ukraine on Wednesday called on Danube ports' grain transshipment companies to reduce prices or else the state will be forced to restrict them administratively, the agriculture ministry quoted deputy minister Taras Vysotskiy as saying.An interior ministry official said on Tuesday that with Ukraine's Black Sea ports blocked by Russia, grain exporters looking to use Danube ports had faced a rapid and unjustified increase in tariffs. "The creation of excessive demand from those wishing to transship grain has allowed service providers…

Russian troops were in the center of the Ukrainian port of Kherson on Thursday after a day of conflicting claims over whether Moscow had captured a major urban center for the first time in its eight-day invasion.Russia's defense ministry said it had captured Kherson on Wednesday but an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded that Ukrainian forces continued to defend the Black Sea port of about 250,000 people."We are a people who broke the enemy's plans in a week," Zelenskiy said in a video address.

More than 4,400 migrants, including at least 205 children, were lost at sea trying to reach Spain in 2021, a monitoring group said on Monday - more than double the figure from the previous year and the most since the group began counting in 2018.The group, Walking Borders, or Caminando Fronteras, blamed increasingly dangerous routes, inferior boats and the fear of some vessels to help migrants at sea for the surge in deaths. According to Spanish official statistics, 39,000 undocumented migrants successfully reached Spain by sea or land last year…

German rescue charity Sea-Eye said on Thursday it had asked Italy for a safe port to disembark some 800 migrants it rescued from boats in distress in the central Mediterranean.The charity vessel SEA-EYE 4 Took onboard another 400 people from a wooden boat on Wednesday night in a seventh rescue operation since it set sail in mid-October, bringing the total to around 800, Sea-Eye said in a statement.It said Rise Above, another rescue ship operated by NGO Mission Lifeline, reached the split-level wooden boat first…

Britain has approved plans to turn away boats illegally carrying migrants to its shores, deepening a rift with France over how to deal with a surge of people risking their lives by trying to cross the Channel in small dinghies.Hundreds of small boats have attempted the journey from France to England this year, across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.Border officials will be trained to force boats away from British waters but will deploy the new tactic only when they deem it safe…

At least seven migrants, one of them pregnant, drowned after a boat carrying them capsized five miles off the Italian island of Lampedusa early on Wednesday, officials said.About 10 other people were missing, Luigi Patronaggio, the chief prosecutor of a team leading investigations into the deaths, told Reuters.The migrants are believed to have started their journey in Tunisia, said Patronaggio, who is working with magistrates based in the Sicilian city of Agrigento."This latest tragedy in the Mediterranean is heartbreaking…

Three Palestinian fishermen who died in an offshore blast on Sunday had encountered an explosive-laden Israeli drone that had fallen into the sea and blew up in their nets, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday.An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment. At the time of the blast, the Israeli military had denied it had any involvement in the incident.The incident came at a time when Palestinian militants have been test-firing rockets into the sea…

Seven neighbors from a village in western Senegal boarded a fishing boat crammed with migrants just after midnight on Oct. 26. Their destination: Europe, 1000 miles away over open ocean.Two of them are now missing, presumed dead, after the boat carrying dozens of people capsized in a collision with the Senegalese coastguard.One can barely walk from his injuries. Another is haunted by the memory of clinging to a piece of flotsam while others around him flailed and sank into the black ocean."You see people die in front of you and you cannot do anything…

The first of many warnings about a deadly cargo in Beirut’s port came in February 2014, about three months after its arrival. It was made by Colonel Joseph Skaf, described by his family as a diligent customs official.Skaf, then the head of the anti-narcotics and money laundering division, informed the customs authority that the shipment of ammonium nitrate was “extremely dangerous” and posed a risk to the public.In his handwritten letter, reviewed by Reuters and authenticated by a source familiar with the case…

Around midnight on February 23, Eulalio Bravo, a marine electrician, was dozing in his rack aboard the San Ramon, an oil tanker anchored off the coast of Venezuela.Suddenly, he heard footsteps pounding along the passageway outside. His captain, Jaime Herrera, cried for help."Be still!" an unfamiliar voice ordered.A gun fired.By the time Bravo and eight other shipmates emerged to see what had happened, the captain lay dead, a gunshot in the back of his head. Herrera's stateroom had been pillaged, drawers flung open, his bunk overturned. The killers were gone, as were thousands of dollars the captain kept under lock and key, according to crew members interviewed by Reuters.The murder…