A Turkish cargo vessel that Italian special forces boarded after the crew detected a group of unidenti-fied people aboard has left waters off the southern city of Naples, website MarineTraffic showed, as police continued to investigate the incident.
Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said that the special forces operation was launched due to the presence of about 15 migrants on board the vessel.
A Turkish transport ministry statement said the Galata Seaways roll-on-roll-off vessel was sailing from the Turkish port of Yalova to Sete in France. The crew realised other people were aboard the ship late on Friday morning, it said.
The crew locked themselves in the engine room and alerted maritime authorities in Turkiye, who in turn contacted Italy and France. The captain told Italian police he issued the alarm after he saw two of the people carrying knives, local media reported.
Ansa news agency said the migrants — who were Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians — included a pregnant woman, and three of them were charged over the weapons. It said two women were taken to hospital, while the rest were transferred to a migrant reception centre.
“Everything ended well,” Crosetto wrote on Twitter on Saturday, as he congratulated the special forces and police for the operation.
Crosetto said on Friday that the migrants had tried to take control of the boat, but local media said none of them had so far been charged with that as investigations continue.The crew of a cargo ship boarded by Italian special forces may not have been threatened by knife-wielding “pirates” as initially reported, Italian media said on Saturday. The ship, Galata Seaways sailing under a Turkish flag, was then escorted to Naples, where Italian investigators were questioning the crew and others aboard.The captain has told investigators that he alerted the authorities after he saw two men with knives try to enter the ship’s machine section and, failing to do so, then rejoined the other stowaways, according to reports by ANSA news agency and La Repubblica daily.
“For the moment, it is not clear what the clan-destine passengers wanted to do with the knives,” La Repubblica said, citing “informed sources.” “Thus it is not clear whether there was a diversion attempt or not,” La Reppublica wrote, adding that no-one has yet been charged with piracy over the incident.
The three migrants who were found to have knives on them have been charged with arms pos-session, but have not been jailed, according to ANSA.
The 15 stowaways came from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Four of them — two men and two women — have been hospitalised, according to ANSA. One of the women is pregnant, the other is weak, one of the men could have a fractured ankle, and the other is suffering from hypothermia.
“When we were discovered, we were afraid that we’d be arrested and repatriated,” ANSA quoted one of them telling investigators. Scores of people fleeing war and poverty in Asia, Middle East and Africa try to enter European Union countries each year.—APP
