France and Italy escalate migration row over charity-operated ship

A charity-operated ship carrying hundreds of asylum seekers rescued in the central Mediterranean has docked in the French port of Toulon after almost three weeks during which Italy’s far-right government failed to give it safe port. The Ocean Viking, operated by the European NGO SOS Méditerranée, had been stuck in Italian waters for weeks carrying sick passengers who had been rescued at sea between Libya and Italy. The standoff marks a deepening rift in Paris’s relations with Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots.