Italy’s interior minister on Tuesday strongly rejected claims that government policies to discourage illegal migration played a role in a shipwreck off the nation’s southern coast in which at least 72 people died.
Minister Matteo Piantedosi said that assertions that “rescues were supposedly conditioned or even impeded by the government constitutes a grave falsehood that offends, above all, the honor and professionalism of our forces working daily in the sea, in particularly difficult scenarios.”
