5 Killed in Collision of Helicopter, Plane Over Val d'Aosta Italy

ROME, LELEMUKU.COM - Five people were killed Friday when a helicopter and a small tourist airplane collided near the border between France and Italy.

Italy's mountain rescue service said rescue workers found two people injured at the crash site and evacuated them.

Officials said the helicopter was carrying skiers to a glacier in the northwestern Italian region of Val d'Aosta when it collided with the tourist airplane about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) over the Rutorglacier.

It was not immediately clear how the crash happened. The identities and nationalities of the victims had not yet been released.

Italy's Val d'Aosta regionis popular with skiers. A website for the region says skiers frequently access the area by helicopter during winter. (VOA)

Italy's Matteo Salvini Lashes Out at Emmanuel Macron as 'Terrible President'

ROME, LELEMUKU.COM - Italy's interior minister on Tuesday called the French leader Emmanuel Macron "a terrible president," in comments that were sure to further add to tensions with Italy's trans-Alpine neighbour over immigration.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League that governs in coalition with the 5-Star Movement, said his issue was not with the French people but with "with Macron, who talks a lot and achieves little, who give lessons of generosity, and then rejects thousands of migrants at the Italian border."

"If Macron is so good, he can prove it with facts by letting in thousands of refugees who are in Italy and whom he promised hospitality, with other European countries," Salvini continued in a Facebook live transmission.

He said he hoped French voters would send Macron a message during the European elections in late May by showing their support for far-right leader Marine Le Pen, with whom Salvini is allied in European politics.

The 5-Star leader, Luigi Di Maio, already sparked annoyance earlier this month by saying his populist movement was ready to help France's anti-government yellow vest protesters. The French Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned the Italian ambassador over sharp anti-French comments from Italy about Europe's migrant crisis.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte has tried to tamp tensions down, saying that while questioning the efficiency of global politics was legitimate "this does not mean to put into discussion our historic friendship with France, nor with the French people."

"This relationship remains strong and steady despite the political discussion," Conte said.

The summons by the French Foreign Ministry on Monday was in reaction to Di Maio's accusations that France is leading colonial-style policies in Africa that are "impoverishing" Africans and driving them to Europe's shores. Salvini repeated them on Tuesday morning television. The populist government last fall accused France of dumping under-age migrants over the border without authorization.

In the recent spat, the populist Italian government accuses France of obliging 14 African countries using the CFA franc currency, established in 1945, to buy French government bonds with half of their reserves to finance public spending in France.

The Italian financial daily il Sole 24 Ore reported that the deposits made by the 14 countries into the French Treasury had marginal impact on French coffers, totaling 10 billion euros — or just 0.5 percent of the French public debt. It also noted that only 9 percent of the 23,370 migrants that arrived in Italy last year came from the 14 countries using the CFA.

A French diplomatic official said Ambassador Teresa Castaldo was questioned Monday about the "unfriendly and baseless" comments. The official said they run counter to "Franco-Italian partnership" and the sense of "European community." The diplomat was not authorized to be publicly named. (VOA)

Up to 117 Missing From Sunken Boat Off Libya to Italy

ROME, LELEMUKU.COM - Three survivors of the sinking of a rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya say up to 117 other migrants were aboard at the time, a U.N. migration official said Saturday.

It appeared to be the latest tragedy on the dangerous central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Europe.

Flavio Di Giacomo of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) told Italian state TV that "unfortunately about 120'' migrants were reported by survivors to have been on the overloaded smugglers' dinghy when it was launched from Libyan shores on Thursday evening.

"After a few hours, it began sinking and people began drowning,'' Di Giacomo said.

Among the missing were 10 women and two children, including a 2-month-old baby, he said. Survivors indicated their fellow migrants came from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Sudan, Di Giacomo said.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who has urged that the government show more compassion for migrants, expressed his "deep sorrow for the tragedy that has taken place in the Mediterranean.''

Premier Giuseppe Conte told reporters he was "shocked'' at the reports of the sinking and vowed that Italy would continue to combat human traffickers.

Italy's populist government has banned private rescue boats from bringing migrants to Italian shores. Together with Malta, Italy has also launched probes of the rescue groups themselves, claiming their operations might facilitate trafficking.

Friday rescue

The three survivors of the sinking were plucked to safety by an Italian navy helicopter on Friday afternoon, the navy said.

The Italian navy said when its patrol plane spotted the sinking dinghy it had about 20 persons aboard. The plane's crew launched two life rafts near the dinghy, which inflated, and a navy destroyer 100 nautical miles (200 kilometers) away sent a helicopter to the scene.

That helicopter rescued the survivors, two from a life raft and one from the water, the navy said, adding that all had hypothermia.

They were flown to Lampedusa, an Italian island near Sicily, and treated in a hospital, Di Giacomo said.

Many migrants cannot afford to pay for life vests, an extra cost when boarding a smuggler's boat in Libya. The survivors said the migrants aboard the dinghy didn't have any.

It wasn't immediately clear exactly how many migrants might have died before the navy plane spotted the sinking dinghy.

The Italian Coast Guard says Libya asked a nearby cargo ship to search forsurvivorsbut the ship reported it found no one.

Libyan navy spokesman AyoubGassimsaid one of its boats was sent Friday to the scene but it "had a mechanical issue and we had to call it back.'' The official said 50 migrants were believed to have been aboard the dinghy when it set sail.

According to the IOM, at least 2,297 people died at sea or went missing trying to reach Europe in 2018. In all, 116,959 migrants reached Europe by sea routes last year, it says.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCRsaid Saturday it was "appalled'' at the news of the latest migrant deaths in the Mediterranean. In a statement from its Geneva headquarters, it said in addition to those missing off Libya, 53 people died in recent days in the western Mediterranean, where one survivor was rescued by a fishing boat after being stranded for more than 24 hours at sea.

Can't be ignored

"We cannot turn a blind eye to the high numbers of people dying on Europe's doorstep,'' said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

Italy has trained and equipped the Libyan coast guard so it can intercept and rescue more migrant boats closer to their shores. But U.N. refugee officials and rights advocates say the migrants rescued by the Libyans are returned to dangerous, overcrowded detention facilities, where detainees face insufficient rations, rape, beatings and torture.

Libyan navy official AyoubGassimsaid Saturday that the Libyan navy had stopped two smuggling boats, one with 67 migrants aboard and the other with 20.

In a separate operation, the German rescue group Sea-Watch said it rescued 47 people from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya.

After Italy's populist government took power in June 2018, the number of migrants reaching Italy after rescue at sea dropped off sharply, as anti-migrant Interior Minister MatteoSalvinirefused to let humanitarian rescue vessels enter Italian ports.

Salvinisays Italy has received hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued from Libyan-based smugglers in unseaworthy boats in the last few years and demands that other European Union countries do their part.

After the latest sea tragedy,Salvinisaid that when humanitarian rescue boats patrol off Libya, "the smugglers resume their dirty trafficking [and] people start dying again.'' (VOA)