DOCTORS Without Borders rescue ship the Geo Barents saved 258 refugees in two operations in the Mediterranean today.

The refugees, mainly Egyptians and Syrians, were en route to Italy as European leaders clashed over proposed reforms to the EU’s asylum process. 

The first rescue was of a wooden boat with “an engine but no system of navigation” just 23 feet long but carrying 162 people, including 29 children.

The second, similar boat carried 96 people, nine of whom were children, rescuers said.

Rescue co-ordinator Flavia Conte said the Italian Maritime Authority had told them to head for the port of Salerno, near Naples, a 250-mile journey.

She said it often picked distant disembarkation points to minimise the time boats can spend on search and rescue operations: “It means to have probably more people crossing in a very unsafe way of or even dying or disappearing or being intercepted and then brought back to Libya.”

Italy’s fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowed today to take “extraordinary measures” to bring down the number of refugees reaching Europe, writing a joint article with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak published simultaneously in Britain’s Times and Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. 

In the piece Britain’s Tory PM declares with Ms Meloni — leader of the Brothers of Italy party which traces its lineage directly back to Mussolini’s Fascist Party — that on stopping immigration “our perspectives and our goals are the same,” adding: “In fact, we are two of the closest friends in Europe today.”

European interior ministers claimed a breakthrough on refugee policy on Wednesday, but the hard-right governments of Poland and Hungary vowed not to agree it today as a summit in Granada, Spain, ground on.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he would never sign off on an obligation to take in refugees who arrived in other member states, saying doing so would be like Hungary being “legally raped.” Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki said he could never agree such a deal for security reasons.

The governments in Granada also clashed on the accession of new members, with Hungary saying it sees no current prospect of Ukraine being admitted.