Libya's coastguard earned praise from Italy's hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday, despite a sharp rise in the number of deaths in the Mediterranean since June and allegations that it deliberately caused the deaths at sea of a woman and a small boy.
"I am fully satisfied with Libyan coastguard's operations and accounts of the lives it has saved," Salvini stated.
"It should be left free to do its job, trained by Italy and supplied with Italian vessels and equipment, it is saving thousands of lives," he added.
Libyan coastguard denied claims last week by Spanish NGO Pro Activa Open Arms that Libyan Coastguard deliberately sank a migrant boat and left a five-year-old boy and two women to die after they refused to board a patrol vessel. One of the women was rescued alive by the charity, which recovered the bodies of the child and the second woman.
An unnamed interior ministry source described the NGO's allegations as "fake news" despite graphic images it posted to Twitter from the scene.
Over six hundred migrants drowned in the Mediterranean between mid-June and mid-July after Italy closed its ports to NGO and international rescue ships, according to figures from the United Nations migration agency.
The migrant death toll in those four weeks alone was nearly half of the deaths to have taken place on the hazardous crossing so far in this year.
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 amid a sharp drop in Mediterranean crossings this year compared with 2017.
