Dozens of refugees and asylum seekers stuck on a ship since their rescue in the Mediterranean 10 days ago, will be allowed to disembark in Malta after four European countries agreed to take them in, the Maltese prime minister said on Saturday.
All 62 refugees on the Alan Kurdi ship “will be disembarked and redistributed”, Joseph Muscat announced on Twitter.
Germany, France, Portugal and Luxembourg will take them in.
“None will remain in Malta which cannot shoulder this burden alone,” he added. On Friday, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said Paris and other European Union partners would “show solidarity” towards the migrants, who include 12 women and two children, aged one and six.
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The group was rescued on April 3 from a barely seaworthy vessel off Libya and brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
But Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini refusedthem entry and said Berlin should take the migrants because they had been rescued by Sea Eye, a German NGO.
“It’s their problem, they must deal with it,” Salvini said, adding he had personally written to the ship’s captain to warn the vessel must “not enter Italian territorial waters”. On Saturday, Salvini, of the far-right League party, expressed pleasure at the outcome.
“As promised, no immigrant from this German NGO (ship) will arrive in Italy. They will go to Germany or elsewhere,” he tweeted.
“The Maltese are right to denounce the danger of the NGO’s – we stand beside them in the fight against human traffickers,” added Salvini, who last month insisted Italian ports would be closed to migrant rescue NGOs operating in the Mediterranean in a bid to force other EU states to take them in.
