Italy 'suspends Schengen' to help Germany on migrants

A Turkish gendarme carries away a drowned 3-year-old child's body
 ROME -- Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Thursday decried the photograph of a 3-year-old Syrian child found dead on a Turkish beach, saying "Europe must not lose face" by denying  help to the wave of migrants arriving from elsewhere in the Mediterranean and Africa.
 "The images that we see are heart-rending and mind-shattering," said Renzi, "I say so as a father even before as a prime minister."    
Renzi made his comments after Italy said it will shelter some 300-400 refugees in the German-speaking Italian region of Alto Adige after provincial authorities in its regional capital, Bolzano, announced they will suspend the Schengen agreement at the Brenner frontier in response  to a request by Germany to Italy for assistance with refugees from the Balkans. 
  Alto Adige president Arno Kompatscher Thursday strongly denied the region is suspending Schengen,  saying that there is "exclusively an intensification of controls."
 The initial statement said that Italy was suspending Schengen as had happened for security reasons during a G7 meeting held on the peninsula. 
 The Italian offer followed  an  announcement by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that Berlin was collaborating with Italy and France for  "a more fair distribution" of migrants in the European Union.
 In Sardinia, meanwhile, a Norwegian freighter carrying 781 migrants and the bodies of six migrants who perished off the Libyan coast was due to arrive at the port of Cagliari following  a series of rescue operations off Libya, maritime sources said.
 In Rome Italian President Mattarella said he was not surprised the EU at last was taking action on the migrant issue as "the events are persuasive," referring to the influx of biblical proportions from Syria, the Balkans and north Africa.