After Olbia, Porto Torres : moments of tension and fear yesterday evening at the “Nino Pala” maritime station, where some groups of migrants of Algerian origin showed up at the offices of the shipping companies' maritime agencies , without valid documents for boarding, showing only a sheet of paper with an attached photo, insufficient for identification.

"This situation is creating security problems in the port area and has forced us to request the intervention of law enforcement," explains Antonio Delrio, an operator with the Tirrenia shipping agency . The migrants arrive from reception centers in Monastir after disembarking in Sardinia a few days ago and are moving to the island in an attempt to board. Some of them, using threatening and verbally abusive language , demanded that operators from Tirrenia, Corsica Ferries, and Moby give them tickets to board the ship, but were removed by the Carabinieri who immediately arrived on the scene.

At the Turritano port station, migrants attempted to bypass the checkpoints; some attempted to board heavy vehicles preparing for boarding . They were stopped thanks to the intervention of the Carabinieri of the local company and the guards who monitor the port area.

In Olbia

It's likely that some of the migrants arrived from Olbia, where the number of migrants dropped from around one hundred people permanently present in and around the Maritime Station to a group of fewer than thirty . It all happened in the space of 48 hours. At least seventy young people who had been waiting in vain to board in Olbia are no longer inside the port of Isola Bianca . This was confirmed yesterday by sources at the Police Headquarters, the Prefecture, and the Port Authority. Caritas, which has been delivering meals to the port practically every day, has also seen a drastic drop in requests; in one case, food was provided for 27 people.

The situation has changed significantly, but there is no official explanation, at least for now, for the drastic reduction in migrants who were trying to board the ferries at all costs. Law enforcement officials have a rough idea. With the arrival of the cold weather and the evacuation of the Maritime Station, about a dozen migrants decided to leave the port and permanently moved to Olbia. Another group of people managed to board the ferries because they had identity documents. Several young people, all Algerian, reportedly decided to attempt boarding by reaching Porto Torres . But something else happened in Olbia. According to rumors, a large group of international protection seekers left the port of Olbia in the last few hours, accompanied by State Police personnel . It is not excluded that those transferred from the White Island could reach the Italian peninsula by scheduled flight (this has already happened, destination Bergamo).

Andrea Busia

Mariangela Pala

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