Italy's Lampedusa island slammed again by migrant arrivals

LAMPEDUSA, Sicily -- The tiny Mediterranean island of Lampedusa is in the throes of yet another season of migrants arriving by sea, and Ibrahima Mbaye and Waly Sarr can only watch from shore as their fellow Africans risk their lives to get here via unsafe smugglers’ boats. Mbaye and Sarr arrived in Italy legally years ago and found work as fishermen on a Lampedusa-based fishing boat, the Vincenzo Padre, which has a mixed Senegalese-Italian crew. They live in town and are part of the community, whereas most other newly arrived Africans pass through, heading to destinations further north after the perilous Mediterranean crossing. “If somebody had told me that in Lampedusa, everyday, 30 or 25 boats arrive, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now that I came here, I saw it with my own eyes,” Mbaye said during a break checking the nets as their fishing boat was docked. Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland, and it has long been the destination of choice for migrant smuggling operations leaving Libya. Over the years, it has witnessed countless numbers of shipwrecks and seen bodies floating offshore, only to be buried in the cemetery on land.