Italy to free stranded migrants

ROME, July 31 (AFP): Italy will allow 116 rescued migrants on its Gregoretti coastguard ship to disembark "within hours", Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Wednesday, after EU countries agreed to share responsibility for looking after them.

"I will give authorisation (for the migrants) to disembark in the coming hours," the far-right minister wrote on Facebook of the migrants and asylum seekers who he had forced to remain on the boat docked in Sicily for five days.

Italian prosecutors had opened an investigation into the conditions on the coastguard supply vessel, where the migrants had only one toilet between them, Italian media reported.

The Commission did not give a breakdown on how the migrants would be shared out between the host countries.