Italy blocks Italian ship returning to port and blasts ‘do gooders’ after Good Samaritan sailors rescued 66 migrants from the sea

ITALY has turned away a ship carrying dozens of rescued migrants, which was flying the Italian flag, as their hardline anti-migrant interior minister blasted “do-gooders”.

The commercial vessel rescued the 66 while supplying oil rigs off the Libyan coast.

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said the migrants had been transferred to an Italian coast guard vessel.

They will be brought to Italy, a source said, though this was not confirmed.

It comes as Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini challenged the “do-gooders” who want to open Italy’s ports to migrants to visit the San Ferdinando slum in Reggio Calabria.

He vowed to enforce only “limited, controlled and qualified” immigration as he toured a crime-laden migrant shantytown in the southern Calabria region.

There, he heard of shameless farmers exploiting migrant workers and women being forced into prostitution to get by. Last month, a migrant was killed in San Ferdinando by his former boss.

Salvini said: “Civility and legality must return as the order of the day.

“The Libyan ports are more than safe and as minister I can guarantee you that the good times are over for the traffickers.”

Salvini has launched a crackdown on migration, closing Italy’s ports to aid groups that rescue migrants and vowing to renegotiate the terms of European missions in the Mediterranean to prevent migrants from disembarking in Italy.

The move comes ahead of a meeting of European interior ministers in the Austrian city of Innsbruck, where German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer wants his counterpart Salvini to agree to take back migrants who arrive at its borders from Italy.

“What is certain is that for Italy there is no plan to take back who has gone abroad. It’s the last thing that could happen,” Salvini said in an interview with Il Messaggero newspaper.

Last month Salvini declared “victory” after a boat carrying 629 stranded migrants was turned away.

Tensions between asylum seekers and charity workers flared on the Aquarius vessel as the hundreds picked up off the Libyan coast were told they face another three days at sea.

Spain agreed to take the migrants, rescued from rickety smuggler boats, after both Italy and Malta denied them access to dock.

Salvini tweeted “Victory!” then said: “The game doesn’t end today… It’s the first important signal that Italy cannot handle this enormous burden alone.

More than 1.8 million have entered Europe since 2014, with more than 600,000 arriving in Italy alone.

In a fiery inaugural speech, Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte branded Europe’s immigration policy a “failure” and vowed to redistribute migrants evenly throughout the bloc.

Conte, who was sworn in as head of Europe’s first “populist” government on June 1, said other nations must take more refugees and help to send back those who were refused asylum.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently warned the migrant crisis will “make or break” the EU.

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