Italian navy ship with 100 rescued migrants docks in Genoa

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 that 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.

Meanwhile, Dutch sea rescue services said they saved a migrant trying to cross the English Channel on a makeshift raft.

The Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution, or KNRM, tweeted that the man was picked up Sunday morning near Ijmuiden, west of Amsterdam.

Dutch media reported that the man appeared to be a 26-year-old refugee from Eritrea who wanted to reach England. The raft he had built had no engine and only a sail made from a piece of plastic.

It was discovered on a busy shipping route used by freighters.