Italy-Malta refused to let a rescue ship with 629 people aboard dock in their ports

Italy and Malta dug in for a second day Monday and refused to let a rescue ship with 629 people aboard dock in their ports, leaving the migrants at sea as a diplomatic standoff escalated under Italy’s new anti-immigrant government. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s hardline interior minister and leader of the anti-immigration League party, called on the country to “close the ports” and pledged Sunday to “STOP the filthy business of illegal immigration.”

Supplies on the ship are beginning to run low and a number of people are in need of medical treatment, including 15 with serious chemical burns and several others suffering from hypothermia, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which operates the rescue ship Aquarius alongside SOS Méditerranée. “This time we say no.”

The standoff is actually the third in recent weeks, after the outgoing government of Premier Paolo Gentiloni refused to let humanitarian aid groups dock in Italian ports until the ships’ flag nations had formally requested permission. The Maltese authorities have been insisting that since the rescue happened in the Libyan search and rescue area and was coordinated from Rome, Malta is neither the coordinating authority nor has the competence to settle this issue, thus it would not take in the migrants and asylum seekers. ROME — A ship carrying more than 600 rescued migrants, including 123 unaccompanied minors and seven pregnant women, remained stranded in the Mediterranean Sea on Monday after Italy’s new populist government refused to allow it to dock the day before, in a move described by rescuers as unprecedented. RELATED: FIFA World Cup preview: France, Denmark poised to push through Group C

The migrants had been rescued during a series of operations Saturday by Italian maritime ships, cargo vessels and the Aquarius itself.
Italy and Malta refuse entry to a German vessel carrying 629 migrants rescued off the coast of Libya.