Lives can best be saved in the Mediterranean by curbing migrant crossings, Italy's hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday after Pope Francis made a new plea for migrant safety amid a sharp increase in migrant deaths.
"Fewer crossings means fewer deaths, " Salvini said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
From 2014 to 2016 there were more than 15,000 deaths in the Mediterranean while there have been 1,100 this year, Salvini stated.
"The Pope's appeal to protect should be combined with concrete action and spending in Africa," he said.
Following a spate of shipwrecks since last month in which hundreds of migrants reportedly drowned in the Mediterranean, Pope Francis on Sunday urged nations to “act decisively and immediately".
“I express my pain before this tragedy,” Francis said.
Over 600 migrants were thought to have perished in the central Mediterranean between mid-June and mid-July - nearly half of the deaths to have taken place on the hazardous crossing so far in 2018.
The Doctors without Borders charity and migrant search-and-rescue organisation SOS Mediterranee blamed the Italian government, among other European authorities, for the “skyrocketing” death toll.
Salvini in June closed Italian ports to NGO and international rescue ships and has since turned away several vessels, forcing the vessels to dock in other countries. Italy and Malta have also reined in their search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
A total 51,782 migrants crossed the Mediterranean and landed in Europe this year through 18 July while 1,490 died attempting the journey, according to the UN migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration.
This year's arrivals are less than half the 110,189 boat migrants who crossed to Europe from January through 18 July last year, when 2,382 people died on the journey, IOM said.
