Pope Francis has likened migrant detention centres in Libya to “concentration camps”.
In his remarks after Sunday's Angelus the Pope urged the international community to help find "lasting solutions" for the management of the migration flows.
"Many of these men, women and children are subjected to inhumane violence. Once again, I ask the international community to keep its promise to seek common, concrete and lasting solutions for the management of migratory flows in Libya and throughout the Mediterranean," Francis said. "And how much those who are rejected suffer. There are some real concentration camps there.”
"It is necessary to put an end to the return of migrants to unsafe countries and to give priority to the rescue of human lives at sea with rescue devices and predictable disembarkation, to guarantee them dignified living conditions, alternatives to detention, regular migration routes and access to asylum," he added.
UN refugee agency officials and human rights organisations have long denounced the conditions of detention centres for migrants in Libya, citing beatings, rape, forms of torture and insufficient food. Migrants endure weeks and months of those conditions, awaiting passage in unseaworthy rubber dinghies or rickety fishing boats arranged by human traffickers.
On Sunday, more than 500 migrants either reached Italy or were trying to. Of those, 128 migrants were identified by the NGO Alarm Phone, which facilitates rescues at sea. The group called on a nearby merchant vessel to intervene to save around 60 people on a rubber boat that was deflating. A further 68 people were on a boat near Malta which had called the NGO in distress.
Medecins Sans Frontieres also tweeted that another 296 people had been rescued overnight and were safely on their rescue ship waiting to be assigned a safe port in Italy or Malta to disembark.
Italy’s militarised police force the Guardia di Finanza also confirmed that it had intercepted a sailboat with around 100 migrants who were then escorted to San Gregorio in Puglia.
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