Southern Italy News

The Italian coast guard is carrying out operations to rescue two boats carrying a total of 1,200 people, it said on Monday, after a surge in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa over the weekend. One of the boats, which is carrying 400 people and is in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria, southern Italy, had previously been sighted in Maltese waters. Earlier on Monday, German NGO Sea-Watch International, which had located the fishing boat with one of its planes…

The Italian coastguard is carrying out operations to rescue two boats carrying a total of 1,200 people, it said on Monday, after a surge in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa over the weekend.One of the boats, which is carrying 400 people and is in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria, southern Italy, had previously been sighted in Maltese waters.Earlier on Monday, German NGO Sea-Watch International, which had located the fishing boat with one of its planes, said one merchant ship in the area had supplied fuel and water to the boat in distress, but Maltese

Italy has arrested three people who they believe trafficked up to 200 migrants aboard a wooden boat that smashed apart on rocks off southern Italy on Sunday, killing at least 64 people, police said on Tuesday. Lieutenant Colonel Alberto Lippolis said a Turkish man and two Pakistani nationals had sailed the boat from Turkey to Italy despite the terrible weather, and were identified by survivors as "the main culprits of the tragedy"."According to initial investigations, they allegedly asked the migrants for about 8…

Rescuers recovered four more bodies on Monday, a day after a wooden sailboat carrying migrants to Europe smashed onto rocks in stormy weather off southern Italy, bringing the death toll to 63, including at least 14 children.Rescuers said most of the migrants came from Afghanistan, as well as from Iran, Somalia, Syria and elsewhere. Pakistan's foreign ministry said 20 Pakistani citizens were on the boat, with four missing and 16 survivors of the nighttime shipwreck.Many of the victims washed ashore close to where the vessel sank near Steccato di Cutro…

A ship operated by Denmark’s Maersk Tankers has been banned from Spanish ports, Spanish officials said, after its cargo of oil products was found to have previously been carried by a vessel that was formerly Russian flagged.Trade in oil and oil products linked to Russia has been complicated by the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations' imposition of a price cap on Russian oil in December and separate European Union measures to prohibit the import of Russian crude and oil products into the bloc.Spain's northeastern Tarragona port on Feb. 10 refused entry to the Singapore-flagged Maersk Magellan tanker, saying the vessel had picked…

Three people died and two were still missing after a tugboat sank off the southern Italian coast while pulling a pontoon on a route between Italy and Albania, the coastguard said on Thursday.The Franco P tugboat sent an alarm signal on Wednesday evening, while sailing some 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) off the city of Bari, an Italian coastguard statement said.The coastguard initially said four bodies had been recovered and another had been spotted at sea.However, in a statement issued later in the afternoon, it said three bodies were being transported ashore while two were still missing."The search continues for two more bodies whose discovery was initially reported by units in the area but did not prove to be true," it said.The tug's captain was saved by a Croatian vessel during rescue ope

A group of migrants who had been blocked aboard a tanker in the Mediterranean for more than a month were allowed to land in Sicily on Saturday after Italy agreed to take them in, NGO Mediterranea said.The 25 people still at sea disembarked late on Saturday in the port town of Pozzallo, in Sicily, in southern Italy, due to health reasons, ending a “nightmare”, the statement said.“The longest and most shameful stand-off of European maritime history ends,” Mediterranea tweeted after the landing.The migrants had been transferred on Friday to the Italian charity ship Mare Jonio…

Carnival Corp’s shares surged 11% on Thursday after its Italian brand Costa Cruises said two of its ships would resume sailing this weekend, with more to follow.Cruise companies, among the worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, were forced to halt voyages for months after ships in Japan, Australia and California made headlines because of large numbers of infections onboard.So far this year, Carnival’s shares have lost nearly two-thirds of their value, while peer Royal Caribbean Cruises Group has lost about 45% and Norwegian Cruise Line Holding Ltd about 67%.Shares of Royal Caribbean were up 6% an

Yilport Holding has submitted its offer for Taranto Container Terminal concession in Italy. Ionian Sea Port Authority (AdSP), the managing institution of Port of Taranto has officially received the request of Yilport Holding to operate the entire set of multi-purpose port facilities in the Port of Taranto. These terminals in Southern Italy handle container traffic, bulk cargo and serve ro-ro traffic. Well located as a relay hub for the Mediterranean Sea, the terminals are integrated to intermodal networks, connecting Southern Italy to Northern Italy and finally to the center of Europe. Yilport’s proposal covers developing and revamping the terminal facilities to attract and grow container volume…

More than 100 rescued migrants from private cargo ship Alexander Maersk, picked up off the coast of southern Italy on Friday, arrived in the southern port of Pozzallo in Sicily on Tuesday. The new Italian government has closed its ports to ships operated by charities in the Mediterranean, saying the European Union must share the burden of disembarking migrants rescued at sea, mostly off the Libyan coast. The Alexander Maersk is a container ship owned by Maersk Line, part of Danish transport and logistics A. P. Moller-Maersk Group, and is not operated by a non-governmental organisation. It had been waiting off the coast of Sicily to be assigned a port since Friday, the ship owner had said.

Greece on Monday closed the Corinth canal after a rockfall that followed heavy rain, temporarily blocking a transit route used mainly by commercial ships and pleasure yachts. The 6.4-km canal serves about 11,000 ships a year, offering a short transit from southern Italy to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, saving mariners a 700-km (434-mile) journey around the Peloponnese Peninsula. But its 21.5-metre (64-foot) width means it is not a key waterway for ocean-going vessels.

Roughly one month after Turkish tug building company Sanmar laid the keels of two new Sirapinar Class tugs, the opportunity to purchase these ASDs has been snapped up by Italian operator Rimorchiatori Napoletani. Commenting on the new design, which was developed in cooperation with cooperation with Robert Allan Ltd, Ali Gurun of Sanmar said, “The industry is under the challenge of ever tighter cost control and the only way to achieve this is to have more bollard pull in more compact hulls with low operational and maintenance costs.

Kalmar, part of Cargotec, has delivered nine Kalmar Gloria reachstackers to the Italian ro-ro and container shipping line Messina Group. The order includes a Kalmar Complete Care maintenance contract, which brings several advantages, such as financial predictability, operational excellence and the option to upgrade equipment after a fixed period. It was booked in Cargotec's 2016 third-quarter order intake, with delivery taking place in January 2017. Messina Group operates a fleet of eight specialised ro-ro container vessels with a total capacity of over 65,000 TEU. The company's operations are concentrated at its terminal in Genoa, southern Italy, which covers an area of over 250,000 m2 and has excellent road and rail connections.

Italian vessels have helped rescue nearly 1,800 migrants from boats trying to reach Italy from north Africa in the last 24 hours, the navy said on Friday, indicating that numbers are rising as the weather warms up. The navy said 1,759 migrants were rescued in 10 operations involving the Italian navy, coastguard and finance police, the European Union's external borders agency Frontex and the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. The Italian frigate Grecale was taking the migrants to the Sicilian port of Augusta, where they were expected to arrive on Saturday morning, a navy statement said. It gave no details of their nationalities.

German liner company Hapag-Lloyd has further improved the Europe Australia Express service (EAX), one of its prime products. New port calls in Fos sur Mer and Pointe de Galets / Short transit times from Europe to Australia unchanged / Italian port switched to Salerno on Northbound leg. According to a media statement from the company, as of December, the French ports Fos sur Mer and Pointe de Galets (La Réunion) will be added to the EAX rotation on the Southbound leg. Furthermore, the Italian call on the Northbound leg will be switched from Genoa to Salerno. With this step, Hapag-Lloyd will improve direct port coverage in Southern Italy while at the same time maintaining good coverage of Northern Italy via other Hapag-Lloyd services and a good train connection.

German navy staff helped deliver a Somali migrant's baby hours after the mother was rescued from the Mediterranean sea, the German armed forces said on Tuesday. Rahma, 33, from Mogadishu, gave birth to a baby girl, Sophia, on board the German rescue boat 'Schleswig Holstein' as it headed for the Italian coast. She was travelling alone at the end of a five-month journey, the Bundeswehr said. Officers said Sophia, who weighed 3 kg (about 7 pounds) at birth, was doing well. She is thought to be the first baby ever born on a German naval vessel. Her mother was one of 4,000 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean over the weekend. She was picked up first by the British navy before being transferred to the German vessel and taken to a hospital for checks after the ship docked in Taranto…

Up to 40 African migrants were feared drowned after their inflatable boat sank near the Libyan coast, survivors told the United Nations refugee agency on Thursday after reaching Italy. "They said between 35 and 40 people died on Wednesday morning," said Carlotta Sami, the UNHCR spokeswoman for southern Europe. All the dead came from sub-Saharan countries such as Senegal, Mali and Benin. A team from the Save the Children charity that interviewed some of the survivors said up to 7 children, aged about 15 or 16, were also believed to have died in the incident. Sami said the boat they were travelling in started to disintegrate shortly after it put to sea from the Tripoli area.

Italian politicians based in the north vowed not to shelter any more migrants saved at sea, even as thousands more were being rescued in the Mediterranean from smugglers' boats in distress, reports AP. All of those rescued will be deposited at ports on Sicily or elsewhere in southern Italy in the coming days, lifting this year's total of new arrivals on Italian soil to more than 50,000. Lombardy president Roberto Maroni said he would be writing to local mayors and prefects in his region on Monday to warn them not to accept any more "illegal immigrants" allocated by the government. Municipalities that did not toe the line would have their funding from the region cut, he said.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday describing how the increasing number of seaborne migrants making the journey from Africa to Europe has not only proved to be too much for European coast guards and navies, it now poses a major problem for Mediterranean shipping. Maritime law states that all vessels, including private vessels and huge container ships, must come to the aid of any boat in distress. This poses a problem for mercantile vessels passing between southern Italy and Africa…

Italian police arrested 15 African men suspected of throwing about a dozen Christians from a migrant boat in the Mediterranean on Thursday, as the crisis off southern Italy intensified. Forty-one more deaths were reported in a separate incident. Police in the Sicilian capital Palermo said they had arrested the men, from Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal, after survivors reported they had thrown 12 people from Nigeria and Ghana to their deaths and threatened other Christians. The 15 were arrested on charges of multiple homicide motivated by religious hatred. "The motive for the resentment was traced to their faiths," police said. The survivors' account underscores the rising chaos in the Mediterranean…

Effective June 27, 2015 Hapag-Lloyd will enhance its Adriatic Express Service (ADX) with a new call at Bari on the eastbound leg. Starting with the sailing of MV Warnow Beluga 147 EB, due to sail from Venice on June 24, 2015 the Adriatic Express (ADX) will then be operated on weekly frequency with the following port rotation: Damietta -Rijeka -Koper -Venice -Ancona -Bari -Port Said (East) -Damietta The new call at Bari on our ADX service emphasizes Hapag-Lloyd’s strength within the Mediterranean Sea, offering now a very extensive coverage of the Southern Italy commercial area and connecting it with the global Hapag-Lloyd network via transhipment at Damietta and Port Said:

Italian officials boarded a cargo ship carrying hundreds of migrants on Tuesday after it left Greek waters and headed towards the coast of southern Italy, the navy said. Three coast guard officers were landed from a helicopter to assess whether the Moldovan-flagged Blue Sky M was able to navigate safely. The vessel, which the navy estimates is carrying around 600 migrants, was spotted close to the coast of Corfu earlier in the day after authorities got an alarm call about a potential incident on board. Greek state television said the alarm had been raised because armed men were on board, but there was no confirmation from the defence or shipping ministries.

A Maltese patrol boat rescued about 80 migrants in a drifting dinghy off the island early on Thursday, but another 20 people were feared to have perished. Along with southern Italy, Malta is one of the main points of arrival for migrants attempting the crossing from North Africa into Europe. A government spokesman in the Maltese capital Valletta said the migrants appeared to have been in the dinghy for a number of days and needed medical treatment. He said they had told their rescuers that there had been 100 people in the boat, but 20 had died. The nationality of the migrants is not yet known. Malta has been pressing the European Union and Mediterranean rim states to cooperate in efforts to stem migrant arrivals and help send them back home, or integrate into European countries.