The Spanish government says it is dispatching a naval ship to Italian waters to escort back a humanitarian group’s boat with 83 migrants on board in deteriorating conditions.
In a statement, the office of Spain’s caretaker center-left Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, says the Audaz warship will end preparations and depart from the southern Spanish port of Rota on Tuesday afternoon.
The vessel’s arrival in Lampedusa is not expected until Friday, the statement says, adding that it will then sail to the main port in the island of Mallorca.
The announcement came as at least 15 migrants jumped into the sea from the Open Arms rescue ship in desperate bids to reach the shores of the Italian island in the central Mediterranean after 19 days on the boat.
Italy’s hard-line anti-migrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has refused port access to the ship, even though six other European countries have agreed to take in the migrants, who were rescued at sea in early August of the coast of Libya.