By Alessandra Cardone
ROME, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Italian authorities on Monday said the country will not offer a safe port to a migrant rescue ship carrying 141 people on board, and Britain should provide assistance to the Gibraltar-flagged vessel.
"The NGO (ship) Aquarius has been coordinated by the Libyan Coast Guard, it is now in Maltese waters and runs a Gibraltar flag," Italy's Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli wrote on Twitter.
"At this point, the United Kingdom has to take responsibility to safeguard the victims of the shipwreck," he added.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini also made clear the Aquarius would not be allowed to disembark in Italy. "The Aquarius is free to dock anywhere, but Italy," the hard-line official, who also leads governing anti-immigration League party, wrote on Facebook.
The Aquarius is operated by the charity SOS Mediterranee in cooperation with Doctors Without Borders (MSF). On Sunday, the two groups appealed for a safe European port to disembark the 141 migrants and asylum seekers.
A first group of 25 people were saved on Aug. 10, after being adrift for some 35 hours on board of a small wooden boat with no engine, MSF explained in a statement.
In a second operation later the same day, the Aquarius picked up further 116 people from a wooden barge. Some 67 unaccompanied minors were included in this second group.
About 70 percent of the 141 rescued people would come from Somalia and Eritrea.
The two charities said both missions had been coordinated by the Libyan coast guard, which however said Libya would not take in the rescued people, and the NGOs should ask for a safe port elsewhere.
"The health conditions of the people on board are stable at the moment, but many are very weak and undernourished," MSF warned in the statement.
After being denied permission to dock by both Italy and Malta, the charity on Monday said the rescue ship was now "in a standby position between the two countries, waiting for further indications."
Considering the situation, the charity would "reiterate the appeal for a safe port in Europe," the MSF Italian branch also told Xinhua on the phone.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's right-wing government has taken a tough line on immigration, after being formed in early June on a coalition between anti-immigration League and populist Five Star Movement.
Since then, Italy has repeatedly denied entry to NGOs' ships carrying people rescued in the central Mediterranean, and has put further pressure on European Union (EU) partners in order for the migration flows to be more evenly shared.
The country received some 667,000 migrants and asylum seekers from 2013 to 2017, according to data by the Interior Ministry.
It saw the number of arrivals decrease sharply since mid-2017, after the previous center-left government struck a controversial deal with Libyan authorities and factions to curb departures from there.
So far this year, it has registered 19,231 arrivals (including some 12,000 from Libya), marking an 80.23 percent and 81 percent drop compared to the same period in 2017 and 2016, respectively.
