The sea rescuers of the “Sea-Watch 3” with 440 people on board had to wait for a week to be assigned a safe harbour. Now they are allowed to enter the Sicilian city of Pozzallo.

The German rescue ship “Sea-Watch 3” is allowed to dock in Sicily after waiting for days. The city of Pozzallo in the south of the Italian Mediterranean island was assigned as a safe haven for the ship with 440 migrants on board. The ship of the Berlin-based organization already set course for Pozzallo in the morning.

The “Sea-Watch 3” had saved hundreds of people in several actions in the past few days. Some migrants have already been taken off-board by the authorities due to their state of health. Due to bad weather, the ship last cruised off the Sicilian coast.

The “Sea-Watch 3” sailing under the German flag had waited for a week to be assigned a safe harbour. The crew sent another appeal to Italy only on Thursday: There were more than 200 children on board, 167 of them without parents or companions. They all went to sea in small boats in Libya. Many of them come from countries south of the Sahara.

This week the ship “Geo Barents” of the organization Doctors Without Borders was allowed to dock with almost 558 boat migrants in the Sicilian port of Augusta. The migrants mostly try to get to Italy from North Africa via the dangerous Mediterranean route.

Image by Chris Grodotzki (Wikimedia)/Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)