(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 9 - Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi on Monday played down complaints from migrant rescue NGOs of being assigned Ancona as their port of landing saying they were used to covering "prohibitive" distances and being at sea for two or three weeks, and stressing that Sicily and Calabria could not become Europe's migrant camp.
    The Ocean Viking is expected to arrive in the Marche port with 37 migrants Tuesday afternoon while the Geo Barents with its 73 migrants will take about a day longer.
    The Ocean Viking is a humanitarian ship chartered from July 2019 by the SOS Méditerranée association.
    With the ship Geo Barents, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) returned to sea-rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean in June 2021.
    This is the seventh year in which MSF personnel have operated at sea in the Mediterranean, and Geo Barents is the sixth humanitarian ship on which they have worked.
    The migrants will be housed in five containers in Ancona.
    Some 3,673 migrants have reached Italy in the first nine days of this year, 10 times more than the 378 who landed in the same period last year. Most of them do not come on NGO ships.
    This year so far Pakistanis (345), Egyptians (201) and Syrians (192) are the most represented nationalities while some 146 unaccompanied minors have arrived so far. (ANSA).