Italy wants to block Frontex ships with migrants from ports

Italy's hard-line interior minister says he wants to block foreign navy ships participating in European migrant rescue missions from docking in Italian ports.

Matteo Salvini, who has already closed Italian ports to aid groups that rescue migrants, says in a Facebook post Sunday that he will bring the Italian position to an upcoming meeting of EU interior ministers in Innsbruck, Austria.

The EU's border control force, Frontex, operates a search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean using air and sea contributions from a variety of countries. On Saturday, the Irish navy ship Samuel Beckett arrived in the Sicilian port of Messina with 106 migrants.

Salvini wants to block future arrivals, forcing other European countries to take them in. He wrote: "With our government the music has changed and will change."