GENOA, Italy — An Italian navy ship docked Sunday in the northern port city of Genoa carrying 100 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean Sea, where the number of migrant crossings has picked up in recent weeks.
The Italian news agency ANSA reported that 23 minors and 17 women, including a few who are pregnant, were among the migrants. They were rescued Thursday from a dinghy in distress off Libya’s coast.
Italy’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, said the migrants would be transferred to five other European Union nations and taken in by the Vatican. Since taking office last year, Salvini has vowed to stop migrants from arriving in Italy.
The migrants who arrived in Genoa were from Libya, Cameroon, Somalia, the Ivory Coast, Mali and Nigeria, ANSA reported.
Paolo Cremonesi, the director of emergency services at the Galliera hospital, said the migrants described suffering while they were at sea for two days and that people on the dinghy with them died.