Tag Archives: Italy

More than 1,300 migrants rescued at sea in one day: Italy coast guard

migrants woman praying after rescue

ROME (Reuters) – More than 1,300 migrants were rescued in 13 separate missions in the Mediterranean on Friday, bringing the total helped over the last three days to more than 2,600, the coast guard said.

The migrants, who were aboard 13 vessels, were saved in the central Mediterranean by ships from the Italian coast guard, the Italian and British navies, merchant ships and vessels operated by non-government organizations, a statement said.

Another 1,300 were rescued on Wednesday.

The voyage from Libya across the Mediterranean to Italy is currently the main route to Europe for migrants.

A record 181,000 made the journey last year, most on flimsy boats run by people-smugglers.

More than 5,000 are believed to have died attempting the crossing in 2016.

In the latest in a series of measures pushed by the European Union to stop migrants reaching Europe, Italy launched a new fund on Wednesday to help African countries control their borders.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Italy pulls last of 29 bodies from avalanche hotel

rescue workers pulling last of bodies from italy avalanche disaster

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled the last of 29 bodies from the wreckage of a hotel in central Italy a week after it was razed by an avalanche, the national fire brigade said on Thursday.

With the discovery on Wednesday night of the bodies of one man and one woman, everyone known to have been at the Hotel Rigopiano when it was flattened has now been accounted for.

Eleven people survived the disaster, which struck in the wake of heavy snowstorms and several powerful earthquakes on Jan. 18. Nine of them, including four children, were extracted shivering after spending days under the crushed masonry.

“When we managed to pull out the survivors it gave us hope and energy,” civil protection agency official Luigi D’Angelo said at an operation base in nearby Penne.

“We never lost that hope, all the way until the end, until we had searched the last centimeter of the hotel.”

Rescuers had to use pickaxes and heavy earth-moving equipment to shift snow and debris and break through the reinforced concrete roof.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the tragedy, which Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said would establish if anyone was to blame.

Many guests had wanted to leave before the wall of snow struck but were unable to do so because the access road was already blocked.

The opposition 5-Star Movement criticized cuts to local government funding and the scrapping of a rural police force. They said the national emergency prevention and response system had been ill-prepared.

“It isn’t the snow’s fault,” the 5-Star wrote on founder Beppe Grillo’s blog. “The failure of those who should have prevented this disaster and helped the communities in difficulty is clear to everyone.”

Gentiloni has promised to launch an emergency decree and add to reconstruction funds set aside after earthquakes tore through the heart of Italy last year.

(Reporting by Antonio Denti and Roberto Mignucci in Penne and Isla Binnie in Rome; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Lough)

Rescuers pull more bodies from Italian hotel ruins, protests in Rome

italian firefighters working to rescue people from avalanche

By Antonio Denti and Isla Binnie

FARINDOLA, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers on Wednesday pulled more bodies from the ruins of an Italian hotel razed by an avalanche as people who lost homes and livelihoods in deadly quakes last year protested in Rome.

Rescuers using pickaxes and mechanical diggers pulled six bodies from the rubble of Hotel Rigopiano a week after it was flattened by a wall of snow, raising the death toll to 24.

No one has been found alive since early Saturday and hopes of finding more survivors are fading. Five people are still missing after the Jan. 18 avalanche struck in the wake of heavy snow storms and a flurry of powerful earthquakes.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said he would launch an emergency decree next week and add to money already set aside to rebuild after the area was devastated by tremors last year.

His government has earmarked 4 billion euros in this year’s budget and Gentiloni said he had told Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission which oversees national finances, that they would allocate more.

“It is up to us to make sure that once the disaster is past, further injustice is not created,” he told parliament.

He has said he wants to give more power to disaster management authorities and the earthquake response will require “billions more” euros, but has given no further details.

As the premier spoke, residents of quake-struck towns including Amatrice, where 300 people died last August, marched towards parliament to protest the handling of the crisis.

“No one has done anything,” protester Maria Domenica D’Annunzio said. “A thousand cows have died. The firemen had to take them away with cranes. There are all these abandoned farmers who are still living in caravans surrounded by 2.5 meters of snow.”

Eleven guests and hotel workers survived the avalanche in the Gran Sasso national park. Snow on the road had prevented many from leaving before the disaster struck.

Prosecutors in nearby Pescara have opened an investigation which Gentiloni said would establish whether the emergency response had malfunctioned and if anyone was responsible for the tragedy.

“I share the desire to find the truth but I don’t share a certain desire which I see spreading, for scapegoats and avengers,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriele Pileri, Cristiano Corvino and Crispian Balmer in Rome; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Helicopter crash piles pressure on Italy avalanche region

medical emergency helicopter crash in Italy

By Sasa Kavic and and Roberto Mignucci

FARINDOLA, Italy (Reuters) – A helicopter ambulance crashed in the Italian mountains on Tuesday killing all six on board, further stretching emergency services workers who found victims but no more survivors after an avalanche buried a nearby hotel.

The discovery of the bodies of two women in the afternoon as rescuers searched through the snow and rubble brought the death toll from last Wednesday’s destruction of the Hotel Rigopiano to 17 as the first funerals of the victims were held.

The unrelated crash of the helicopter on the other side of the Gran Sasso range about 100 km (60 miles) away in the Abruzzo region put the emergency services under further strain.

Rescue workers had to climb up part of a mountain to reach the wrecked helicopter, which had been heading to a hospital in the regional capital of L’Aquila with an injured skier aboard when it plunged into a mountainside.

The cause of the crash, which happened in the fog, was not immediately known.

The new disaster hit the region as the first funerals were held for the victims of the avalanche disaster.

Family and friends of hotel worker Alessandro Giancaterino filed into a church in nearby Farindola behind the 42-year-old’s coffin, which was draped with an Inter Milan soccer club flag.

“He was a perfect person. Kind, gentle. He loved his job at the hotel,” one friend said outside the church.

His brother, former Farindola mayor Massimiliano Giancaterino, did not speak to reporters. He told Italian state TV on Monday he had signed off on permission to add an extension to the hotel while in office.

“If I had known this would happen I would have cut off my right arm rather than sign the approval,” the former mayor said. “But hindsight doesn’t solve anything. You only ever think of doing what is best for the area, giving people opportunity.”

Some of the 11 survivors spent two days under ice and rubble. Twelve people are still missing since the wall of snow razed the four-storey building last Wednesday, hours after earthquakes shook Abruzzo and the neighboring regions.

Three puppies were found alive in the hotel’s crushed boiler room on Monday. The last time surviving people were brought out was on Saturday morning.

But officials vowed to carry on with the rescue effort.

“We will not stop until we are certain that no one else is left under there,” said civil protection official Luigi D’Angelo. “We are searching in the heart of the building.”

Prosecutors in nearby Pescara have opened an investigation into the hotel disaster. Pescara prosecutor Cristina Tedeschini said her office would probe the hotel’s structure, accessibility and communications surrounding the incident.

(Additional reporting by Antonio Denti in Penne and Steve Scherer in Rome; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Philip Pullella and Alison Williams)

Italy avalanche death toll rises to 14

Italian firefighters working to save those buried in avalanche

FARINDOLA, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers working through the night pulled five more bodies from the wreck of a hotel in central Italy that was razed by an avalanche last week, bringing the death toll to 14, the national fire brigade said on Tuesday.

The latest bodies – three men and two women – were recovered hours before families of victims were due to hold the first funerals of those killed in the avalanche.

Eleven people so far have been rescued from in and around the hotel in the Gran Sasso national park, some of them surviving for two days under ice and rubble.

But 15 people are still missing after a wall of snow crashed into the four-storey building last Wednesday, hours after earthquakes shook the region.

Prosecutors in nearby Pescara have opened an investigation into the avalanche.

(Reporting by Sasa Kavic and Roberto Mignucci in Farindola and Isla Binnie in Rome; Editing by Philip Pullella and Hugh Lawson)

Italy avalanche rescuers dig for fifth day, alleged delay probed

Rescue workers at Italy hotel that was covered after avalanche

By Antonio Denti

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – Rescuers dug in the buried ruins of a mountainside hotel in central Italy for a fifth day running on Monday, as questions multiplied over the initial response to last week’s blizzards and deadly avalanche.

Eleven people survived the Jan. 18 disaster in the Gran Sasso national park, including four children who were extracted from under tonnes of snow and debris on Friday. Six bodies have been recovered and a further 23 people are still missing.

Video footage showed one rescuer wriggling through a tiny hole cut in the concrete roof of the Hotel Rigopiano trying to find more possible survivors.

“We are working on the theory that the avalanche did not necessarily hit or destroy every room and that we haven’t yet reached the heart of the structure,” said Luca Cari, spokesman of the national fire brigades.

“We are continuing to explore the inside of the building in the hope of finding someone alive, although there is no certainty of this.”

Italian media published an email sent by the hotel manager on Jan. 18 to an array of local authorities, urging help to clear the access roads to enable the guests to escape after a series of powerful earthquakes had rattled the region.

“The clients have been terrorized by the tremors,” said the email. However, no help came before the avalanche struck, with local authorities saying that their most powerful snow plow had broken down and they did not have the money to repair it.

“The snow plow had been in for repairs for months”, said Luigi Di Maio, a leading light in the opposition 5-Star Movement, who accused the government of depriving local provinces of vital funds.

The government has promised to review its emergency response apparatus in the wake of the disaster. A court in nearby Pescara has opened an investigation into the tragedy.

Staff operating emergency hotlines allegedly did not take seriously early telephone calls reporting the disaster.

“The operator did not believe me,” said restaurant owner Quintino Marcella, who had called for help after one of his employees telephoned from the obliterated hotel.

Italian media said the emergency services had contacted the hotel’s owner to see if he could confirm the avalanche. He reportedly said he knew nothing about it, but the operators were apparently unaware that he was not actually there.

As a result, the rescue operation only got into gear some 2-1/2 hours later, with the first rescue team arriving by ski 11 hours after the catastrophe because the roads were impassable.

Waiting nervously at a hospital in Pescara, the father of one man who was in the hotel accused authorities of wrongly telling him his son had been rescued along with his girlfriend.

Alessio Feniello said his son’s girlfriend had been pulled to safety and had told her rescuers that Stefano Feniello, 28, was still inside.

“If there was a thread of hope to rescue (my son), there isn’t any hope anymore,” he told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Roberto Mignucci and Carmelo Camilli in Pescara; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Tom Heneghan)

Eight survivors found after massive Italy avalanche

firefighters rescue survivor from Italy hotel that had an avalanche hit

By Antonio Denti and Valentina Consiglio

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – Eight people were found alive on Friday two days after being buried under a massive avalanche that hit a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy, a Civil Protection official said.

Titti Postiglione told reporters that two of the survivors had already been pulled clear of the snow and debris which destroyed the isolated Hotel Rigopiano on Wednesday. Rescuers were digging to free the remaining six people.

“Finding these people gives us further hope there are other survivors,” Postiglione said.

More than 30 people, including four children, were in the building when the avalanche slammed into it, officials said, reducing much of it to rubble and spreading debris across the valley floor.

Two men who were outside the hotel at the time managed to escape the wall of snow. Officials have confirmed that two bodies have been removed from the site, while Italian media said two more corpses had been located.

One of the survivors found on Friday was a young girl, Deputy Interior Minister Filippo Bubbico said, who is helping coordinate rescue efforts at the scene.

The group were found in the hotel kitchen area which was not crushed by the tonnes of snow that obliterated much of the four-storey building, media said

Helicopters have been dispatched with equipment and doctors to help extract and evacuate the survivors.

The disaster struck the hotel in the Gran Sasso park late on Wednesday afternoon amid a driving snowstorm, just hours after four earthquakes with a magnitude above 5 rattled the area.

As much as 5 meters (16 ft) of snow covered much of what is left of the hotel, said Walter Milan, a member of the Alpine Rescue service who was on the scene. Only sections of the spa and swimming area were intact, he said.

An investigation into the tragedy has been opened by a court in Pescara amid accusations that the emergency response was slow. The first rescuers arrived amid a snow storm on skis early on Thursday morning, some 11 hours after the avalanche.

Giampiero Parete, a chef who was a guest in the hotel, had gone to his car to get headache pills for his wife when the avalanche struck. His wife and two children, aged six and eight, are still missing.

Parete called his boss, Quintino Marcella, with his cell phone at 5:40 p.m. on Wednesday, just after the avalanche had struck, asking him to call for help.

“He told me: ‘The hotel has collapsed'” Marcella said in an interview with RAI state TV, adding that the local prefecture did not immediately believe him. He kept calling until he was assured help was on the way some two hours later.

(Reporting Antonio Denti in Penne and Valentina Consiglio in Rome, writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Toby Chopra and Crispian Balmer)

Avalanche destroys Italian hotel, up to 30 feared dead under snow

An aerial view shows Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's firefighters.

By Roberto Mignucci

PENNE, Italy (Reuters) – A huge avalanche swallowed up a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy after a series of strong earthquakes rocked the area, burying up to 30 people under tonnes of snow and debris, officials said on Thursday.

Italian media said three bodies had been retrieved from the site. Rescue workers declined to comment on the reports, but said they had yet to find any sign of life.

The gabled peaks of parts of the roof and a row of windows were the only sections of the four-storey Hotel Rigopiano still visible after the wall of snow smashed into the four-star spa resort early on Wednesday evening.

Local authorities said about 30 people had been in the building at the time, including two children, but more than 20 hours later, only a couple of survivors had been found — two men who had been outside when the disaster struck.

“The hotel is almost completely destroyed. We’ve called out but we’ve heard no replies, no voices,” said Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine Rescue squad who was on the scene.

A photo taken from a video shows the snow inside the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's Finance Police.

A photo taken from a video shows the snow inside the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, central Italy, hit by an avalanche, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy’s Finance Police. Guardia Di Finanza/Handout via REUTERS

“We’re digging and looking for people,” he told Reuters by phone from the isolated location in the Gran Sasso mountain range in the central Abruzzo region.

Rescue workers entered what appeared to be a lobby decorated with oil paintings and plants, where a landslide had torn through a wall, television footage showed.

Mattresses and furniture were spotted dozens of metres (yards) away, local media reported, and sniffer dogs were brought to the area to help locate possible survivors.

“I am alive because I went to get something from my car,” one of the two survivors, Giampiero Parete, told medical staff.

Italian media said he had been on holiday with his wife and two children, who were all still missing.

SNOW DRIFTS

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni called for national unity, saying Italy was caught in an “unprecedented vice” of earthquakes and heavy snows simultaneously.

The rescue operation was hampered by metres of snow which has fallen on the Gran Sasso in recent days. Drifts made snow as deep as five metres (16 feet) in some places and snow ploughs struggled to cut a path up winding mountain roads.

The first rescuers only managed to arrive at 4.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) after having to ski through a blizzard to reach the site. After dawn broke, emergency services sent in helicopters.

Firefighters arrive near Hotel Rigopiano, hit by an avalanche, in Farindola, central Italy, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy's firefighters.

Firefighters arrive near Hotel Rigopiano, hit by an avalanche, in Farindola, central Italy, in this January 19, 2017 handout picture provided by Italy’s firefighters. Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via REUTERS

A base camp for rescue workers was set up in the town of Penne, some 10 km (6 miles) away, where ambulances waited.

The avalanche shunted the 43-room hotel, which is 1,200 metres (4,000 ft) above sea level, some 10 metres (30 ft) down the hill, according to media reports.

The disaster struck just hours after four earthquakes with a magnitude of above 5.0 hit central Italy, sparking fears about possible avalanches.

Italian media said guests at the hotel had checked out and were waiting for a snow plough to arrive to open up the road and let them down the mountain. However, the avalanche struck before they had been able to leave.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella, Valentina Consiglio and Steve Scherer; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Gareth Jones)

Berlin market attack suspect killed in police shootout in Italy

The body of Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack, is seen covered with a thermal blanket next to Italian officers in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan, Italy December 23, 2016.

By Emilio Parodi and Antonella Cinelli

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian police shot dead the man believed to be responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours of Friday.

The suspect – 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri – traveled to Italy from France, triggering a spate of criticism from euroskeptics over Europe’s open-border Schengen pact.

A police chief said his men had no idea they might be dealing with Amri when they approached him at around 3 a.m. (2200 EDT) outside a station in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of the northern city of Milan.

Amri is suspected of driving a truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday killing 12 people, and security forces across Europe have been trying to track him down.

The truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.

Militant group Islamic State acknowledged Amri’s death and his suspected role in the German attack – for which it has claimed responsibility – through its Amaq news agency.

“The executor of the Berlin attacks carries out another attack on Italian police in Milan and is killed in a shoot-out,” it said.

Milan police chief Antonio De Iesu told reporters that Amri had arrived in Milan’s main railway station from France at around 1 a.m. and had then traveled to Sesto San Giovanni, where two young policemen approached him because he looked suspicious.

“We had no intelligence that he could be in Milan,” De Iesu said. “They had no perception that it could be him otherwise they would have been much more cautious.”

He failed to produce any identification so the police requested he empty his pockets and his small backpack. He pulled a loaded gun from his bag and shot at one of the men, lightly wounding him in the shoulder.

Amri then hid behind a nearby car but the other police officer managed to shoot him once or twice, killing him on the spot. Amri was identified by his finger prints.

ITALIAN JAIL

De Iesu said that besides the gun, Amri had been carrying a small pocket knife. He also had a few hundred euros on him but no cell phone. Amri once spent four years in jail in Italy and police were trying to work out if he knew someone in Sesto.

A judicial source had earlier told Reuters that police had a tip off that Amri might be in the Milan area and that additional patrols had been sent out to look for him. De Iesu denied that, saying only that the authorities had recently ordered tighter security and more identification checks across the country.

“The two policemen simply decided to check up on a foreigner,” De Iesu said.

Leading euroskeptics were quick to blame the Schengen open pact for allowing the fugitive to travel easily.

“This escapade in at least two or three countries is symptomatic of the total security catastrophe that is the Schengen agreement,” said Marine Le Pen, who leads France’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Front party and is running for president.

“I reiterate my pledge to give back France full control of its sovereignty, its national borders and to put an end to the consequences of the Schengen agreement,” she said.

Amri had been caught on camera by German police on a regular stake-out at a mosque in Berlin’s Moabit district early on Tuesday, Germany’s rbb public broadcaster reported. His movements thereafter are not clear.

He had originally come to Europe in 2011, reaching the Italian island of Lampedusa by boat. He told authorities he was a minor, though documents now indicate he was not, and he was transferred to Catania, Sicily, where he was enrolled in school.

Just months later he was arrested by police after he attempted to set fire to the school, a senior police source said. He was later convicted of vandalism, threats, and theft.

He spent almost four years in Italian prisons before being ordered out of the country after Tunisia refused to accept him back because he did not have I.D. papers linking him to the north African country.

He moved to Germany and applied for asylum there, but this was rejected after he was identified by security agencies as a potential threat. Once again he could not be deported because of a lack of identification documentation.

A woman lays flowers near the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin, Germany, December 23, 2016, following an attack by a truck which ploughed through a crowd at the market on Monday night.

A woman lays flowers near the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin, Germany, December 23, 2016, following an attack by a truck which ploughed through a crowd at the market on Monday night. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

A spokeswoman for Angela Merkel said the German Chancellor will discuss the deportation of rejected asylum applicants during a phone conversation with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.

The Berlin attack has put Europe on high alert over the Christmas period.

In the early hours of Friday morning, German special forces arrested two men suspected of planning an attack on a shopping mall in the city of OberhausenIn in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The men – two brothers from Kosovo, aged 28 and 31 – were arrested in the city of Duisburg on information from security sources, police said.

A police spokesman said there was no connection between the Duisburg arrests and the Amri case.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Anneli Palmen in Duesseldorf, Emilio Parodi, Elvira Pollina and Ilaria Polleschi in Milan, Antonella Cinelli and Gavin Jones in Rome; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Dow set to open at record high; oil hits $55

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange

By Yashaswini Swamynathan

(Reuters) – The Dow was poised to open at an all-time high on Monday, as oil prices topped $55 a barrel for the first time in 16 months, and investors shrugged off the defeat of a referendum in Italy for constitutional reforms.

Futures lost ground slightly on Sunday after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign following the rejection.

However, world stocks, including Italian shares, reversed course to trade higher on Monday as investors bet against immediate snap elections in the country.

Brent crude prices were up 0.8 percent, after touching a high of $55.33, taking the total gains to 19 percent since Wednesday, when OPEC and other producers struck a deal to limit output to prop up prices. [O/R]

The Dow will open at a record intraday high, its eighth since Nov. 10, if active trading follows movement in futures. The index has marked four straight weeks of gains, benefiting from investors’ rotation into sectors such as financials, which are likely to gain from President-elect Donald Trump’s policies.

“You’ve got a very split tape with some sectors working well, like the financials and transports, while the rest of the market is not working well,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive at Orlando, Florida-based 50 Park Investments.

However, Wall Street closed little changed on Friday as investors booked profits off bank stocks, despite a strong payrolls report that strengthened the prospects of an interest rate hike next week.

Dow e-minis <1YMc1> were up 73 points, or 0.38 percent, at 8:28 a.m. ET (130 GMT), with 57,797 contracts changing hands on Monday.

S&P 500 e-minis <ESc1> were up 6.5 points, or 0.3 percent, with 249,606 contracts traded.

Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQc1> were up 17.5 points, or 0.37 percent, on volume of 39,369 contracts.

An Institute of Supply Management report is likely to show activity in the U.S. services sector rose slightly in November from the previous month. The report is due at 10:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT)

New York Federal Reserve President and permanent voting member William Dudley said Trump’s election had created “considerable” uncertainty on the policies he would pursue so it was too soon for the Fed to judge whether its plan for gradual interest rate hikes needs adjusting.

Shares of Energy Transfer <ETP.N> dropped 6.9 percent to $32 after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned down a permit for the company’s controversial pipeline project running through North Dakota.

FairPoint <FRP.O> shares jumped 14.4 percent after Consolidated Communications <CNSL.O> said it would buy the broadband service provider in an all-stock deal valued at $1.5 billion, including debt.

Chesapeake Energy <CHK.N> rose 4.2 percent to $7.53 after the U.S. natural gas producer said it would sell a part of its acreage in the Haynesville Shale area for $450 million to a private company.

(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)