After a two week quarantine on a cruise ship off the coast of Sicily, illegal migrants from the NGO ships Alan Kurdi and Aita Mari have been allowed to enter Italy, despite the country’s leftist-establishment government claiming last month that its ports would remain closed until July 31st.
On Monday, 181 migrants were allowed to leave the cruise ship ‘Raffaele Rubattino’ to land at a port in Palermo after they all tested negative for the Wuhan coronavirus, Italy News Agency reports.
Of the 183 illegal migrants that disembarked on Monday, only two were women. 146 came from the Alan Kurdi, a ship operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye, while the rest came from the Aita Mari, a vessel run by the Basque NGO Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario.
The migrants, after having set foot on Italian land, were transferred by bus to reception centers in Benevento and Salerno.
The successful disembarking of this group of migrants is only the latest victory for NGO migrant transport ships over Italy’s leftist-establishment coalition government.