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ABOARD THE OPEN ARMS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA: A Spanish rescue boat plucked 60 migrants from a rubber dinghy in the sea near Libya on Saturday, prompting Italy's hard-line interior minister to immediately announce it won't be allowed to dock in any Italian port.
The vessel, run by Spanish humanitarian group Proactiva Open Arms, said it rescued the migrants — including five women, a nine-year-old child and three teenagers — after it spotted a rubber boat patched with duct tape floating in the sea. All the migrants appeared in good health.
Italy's right-wing Interior Minister Matteo Salvini quickly responded, saying the boat "can forget about arriving in an Italian port." He claimed the boat should go to Malta, the nearest port. But Malta swiftly pushed back, with its interior minister contending the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, was closer.
Salvini has vowed that no more humanitarian groups' rescue boats will dock in Italy. In recent years, private rescue vessels brought many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants saved from smuggler boats to Italy.
On Saturday Salvini contended on Twitter that the Open Arms had taken on the migrants before a Libyan motorboat, in Libya's search-and-rescue zone, could intervene.
But the boat's captain, Marco Martinez, said he informed the Rome-based Maritime Rescue Coordination Center and was instructed to call Libyan maritime authorities, who didn't answer either phone or by radio. The captain said officials in Rome then told him it was up to him to decide whether to carry out the rescue or not.
An AP journalist who was aboard a nearby companion vessel when the dinghy was spotted reported that a Libya coast guard vessel was seen approaching the Open Arms, but just as it neared the rescue, it made a U-turn and left, ordering the Open Arms to return to Spain.
Malta's interior minister, Michael Farrugia, tweeted back his retort to Salvini. "Quit spreading incorrect news, dragging Malta into it for no reason," he wrote, attaching a map which he said indicated the rescue occurred in Libya's search-and-rescue area and in waters between Libya and Lampedusa.
Saturday's operation was the latest that highlighted political tensions in the European Union over which countries should bear the burden of incoming asylum-seekers.
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