Port Of Catania News

Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg joined a flotilla of boats loaded with aid for Gaza as they set sail from Barcelona on Sunday, aiming to break Israel's naval blockade and deliver food and other humanitarian supplies to the shattered enclave.Thousands of supporters gathered at Barcelona's port to see off the boats, many of them waving Palestinian flags and chanting "Free Palestine" and "It's not a war, it's a genocide"."This is a mission to challenge the extremely violent, business-as-usual international system that is failing to uphold international law…

International nonprofit organisation Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of its vessels left the Italian port of Catania on Sunday, heading for Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid, after a previous attempt failed due to a drone attack on a separate ship in the Mediterranean.The crew of volunteers, including climate activist Greta Thunberg and Irish actor Liam Cunningham, set sail on the Madleen, carrying barrels of what the group called "limited amounts, though symbolic" of relief supplies.Another vessel operated by the group…

The fifth in a series of 12 hybrid ro-ro ships for the Grimaldi Group has been christened in the port of Catania.Built by the Chinese Jinling shipyard in Nanjing, Eco Catania and its sister vessels already in service in the Mediterranean are part of the GG5G (Grimaldi Green 5th Generation) class, which rank among the largest and most eco-friendly ro-ro ships in the world.With a transport capacity of more than 500 trailers, these green giants are able to halve CO2 emissions compared to the previous generation of ro-ro ships operated by the Grimaldi Group…

The UN refugee organization UNHCR on Thursday (World Refugee Day) called on European countries to include the migrants currently trapped on the rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3.The 43 migrants, including three unaccompanied minors, urgently need a "safe haven", according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) .UNHCR urged European States to call forth their principles of humanity and compassion, and to allow the group to disembark. Ten refugees and migrants were previously evacuated to Lampedusa last weekend on medical grounds.“Europe played an intrinsic role in creating the legal architecture that underpins modern day international refugee law,” said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR Special Envoy of the Central Mediterranean.

Italy's coastguard on Friday blocked the Sea-Watch 3 migrant rescue ship in the port of Catania citing safety and environmental concerns, delaying the vessel's plans to return to patrolling the Libyan coastline.After a long standoff with the Italian government, on Thursday the Dutch-flagged vessel, run by a German charity, was allowed to disembark 47 migrants it had rescued at sea on Jan. 19 in the Sicilian port.Coastguard inspectors who boarded the Sea-Watch on Thursday found "irregularities" relating to safety and environmental standards.

Some EU officials say NGOs inadvertently encourage people smuggling; NGOs say they are only trying to save lives. A "ferry service" that encourages people smugglers or an essential humanitarian rescue service that saves thousands of African migrants making a dangerous sea crossing to Europe? This debate among EU officials about the role of aid groups in the Mediterranean highlights their dilemma between the moral and legal obligation of helping those in need, and growing pressure from voters to keep them away. Escaping wars and poverty, more than 360,000 refugees and migrants made it to European shores across the Mediterranean last year. Most of them arrived on EU rescue vessels.

Rescuers found one migrant dead and saved 354 on a fishing boat in rough seas near the southwestern shore of Italy, the coast guard said on Monday. The body was found on Sunday night, adding to the weekend's Mediterranean death toll after 49 people were found dead, probably from suffocation, on an overcrowded fishing boat. Two Italian coast guard ships, a Croatian coast guard vessel deployed under the European Union's Triton maritime mission and a merchant ship carried out the rescue in choppy waters near the coast of Calabria, the Italian coast guard said in a statement. Survivors of the weekend's tragedy were brought ashore to the Sicilian port of Catania on Monday.

Almost 3,600 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded boats sailing from Africa to Europe over the past 48 hours, Italy said on Thursday, with sea conditions seen as perfect for attempting the crossing. As more than 600 migrants were brought ashore at the port of Catania in Sicily, rescuers plucked another 2,500 from rickety boats off the coast of Libya, the coast guard said. Most of those who arrived in Catania had been picked up by the British warship HMS Bulwark and were Somali and Nigerian, port officials said. With Libya engulfed in strife, people smugglers are increasingly free to pack migrants onto unsafe boats, and they are expected to push total arrivals in Italy for 2015 to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 on last year, according to an Interior Ministry projection.

Around forty migrants died in the Mediterranean on Sunday, according to survivors of the journey who arrived on the southern Italian island of Sicily on Tuesday, local Save the Children spokeswoman Giovanna Di Benedetto said. The deaths were reported by some of the roughly 240 migrants from Ghana, Gambia, Senegal and Ivory Coast who arrived in the port of Catania, another Save the Children spokeswoman said. A Maltese merchant ship rescued the migrants from two rubber boats on which they had set off from Libya, where lawlessness has been exploited by traffickers who can charge thousands of dollars to people looking for a better life in Europe.

British and German warships made ready to sail for waters off Libya as Europe ramped up rescue operations in the Mediterranean after up to 900 desperate migrants drowned last weekend on a boat heading for Italy. Yet hours after European Union leaders agreed in Brussels on Thursday to treble funding for EU maritime missions and pledged more ships and aircraft, 14 clandestine migrants were killed when a train ploughed into dozens of Somalis and Afghans making their way in darkness along a rail track in a Macedonian gorge. The incident highlighted the variety of routes that growing numbers are taking to escape war and poverty in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and chance their luck in a wealthy region that offers, at best, a chilly welcome.

Ships carrying rescued migrants arrive in Italian ports; Eight more suspected of human trafficking detained in Sicily. As many as 5,000 migrants a week could arrive in Italy by sea from North African ports in the next five months unless something is done about the issue, according to an interior ministry projection. The figures, published on Thursday by the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero and confirmed by a ministry source, estimated that as many as 200,000 could arrive by the end of this year. Arrivals of migrants usually spike in the spring and summer months because of better weather in the Mediterranean but the situation is expected to worsen because of growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya, from where most of the migrants depart.

The European Union proposed doubling the size of its Mediterranean search and rescue operations on Monday, as the first bodies were brought ashore of some 900 people feared killed in the deadliest shipwreck while trying to reach Europe. Three other rescue operations were underway on Monday to save hundreds more migrants in peril on overloaded vessels making the journey from the north coast of Africa to Europe. The mass deaths have caused shock in Europe, where a decision to scale back naval operations last year seems to have increased the risks for migrants without reducing their numbers. "The situation in the Mediterranean is dramatic.

EU foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg; 24 corpses carried off Italian patrol ship in Malta. Death toll from Sunday's shipwreck off Libya still unclear. European Union foreign ministers gathered in Luxembourg on Monday under pressure to produce more than words as bodies were brought ashore in Malta among hundreds feared drowned in the latest Mediterranean migrant tragedy. The death toll from Sunday's shipwreck off the coast of Libya was uncertain after officials said there had been at least 700 people on board, some reportedly locked in the hold. Hundreds of kilometres (miles) to the east, another vessel carrying dozens of migrants ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday. Greek coast guards said at least three people were killed.