Rome: Italy has detained two more migrant rescue vessels for breaking a contested new law, bringing the total seized in 48 hours to three, the charities which operate them said Wednesday.
The Spanish Open Arms charity said it was fined 10,000 euros and its eponymous ship was seized Tuesday after it ignored instructions not to carry out two rescues to save 170 people stranded in the Mediterranean.
The German Sea-Eye charity meanwhile said it was fined around 3,000 euros and its SEA-EYE 4 ship detained after performing three consecutive rescue operations, which it said saved 114 lives.
Both vessels broke a law which stipulates charities must return to port between every rescue.
On Monday, the Aurora, operated by Germany's Sea-Watch charity, was detained under a different provision of the same law, for disembarking migrants it had saved in a non-designated port.
The law was brought in earlier this year by hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a bid to curb boat arrivals, even though charity ships only pick up a fraction of the total saved.
More than 105,000 migrants have landed in Italy so far this year, more than double the number in the same period last year, interior ministry data shows.
More than 2,000 people have died attempting the central Mediterranean crossing since the start of the year, the UN migration agency says.
Open Arms said it was sailing to its designated port of Carrara with 26 rescued migrants on board late last week when it received a distress call from Alarm Phone, a hotline used by migrants in trouble.
The alert "referred to two boats in danger south of our position", information confirmed by a non-governmental surveillance plane.
The charity said there was initially no response from Italian authorities, so it followed international maritime law and went to assist.
The ship later received an order to "abandon the search and proceed to the assigned port, as the competent authorities had taken the situation in hand", but Open Arms said authorities would not say how long any rescue might be in coming.
Its ship went on to pull 132 people to safety from the first boat in a two-hour operation on Friday "during which no governmental vessel showed up, confirming once again that these were people left adrift", Open Arms said.
It then rescued the people in the second boat, before heading to Carrara, in Tuscany, where it was seized.
Sea-Eye chief Gorden Isler said the SEA EYE 4 was detained in the southern port of Salerno for "having carried out more than one rescue operation" on Thursday and Friday -- including one boat in which four people were unconscious.
"Had we not done so, people would have lost their lives," he said in a statement.
Isler said the Italian law runs "contrary to international law, which obliges a captain to come to the help of people in distress at sea".
Open Arms said it had a "moral and legal duty" to save people, and warned of the dangers of detaining rescue vessels in a period of intense departures of migrant boats from North Africa.
