Lampedusa (Italy): A sick 19-year-old migrant and his young brother have been evacuated from a Sea-Watch rescue boat banned by Italy from docking on the island of Lampedusa.
Another 40 migrants are still onboard, Sea-Watch said.
“A medical evacuation just took place. One patient under serious pain and his brother were disembarked from #SeaWatch3,” the NGO tweeted.
It quoted the ship’s captain, Carola Rackete, as saying: “We cannot wait for every single person to become a medical emergency until Europe recognises they have basic rights.”
The stand-off between Sea-Watch 3 and the Italian authorities escalated on Wednesday when the vessel entered Italian waters despite a threat of hefty fines from far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
Rackete has said she is ready to go to prison to bring the migrants to safety. They have spent more than two weeks at sea.
Salvini has said the migrants can only disembark if they head straight to the Netherlands, where the Sea-Watch 3 is registered, or to Germany.
On Thursday, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Brussels was “closely involved in coordinating with the member states to find a solution for relocating the migrants on board Sea-Watch 3 once they are disembarked.”
According to Italian media reports, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had a long chat with his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka in Japan on Friday.
Five Italian left-wing MPs spent the night onboard the ship in a gesture of solidarity.
“We’ll remain onboard until all of the migrants have disembarked,” said Graziano Delrio, who was the minister in charge of the Italian coastguard between 2015 and 2018.
Salvini has called for the Sea-Watch 3 to be seized and its crew to be arrested for aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

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