Italy: Over 1,000 migrants saved in the Mediterranean
July 24, 2022
Five migrants are dead and more than a thousand migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean Sea since Saturday, European charities and the Italian Coast Guard said.
Most of those rescued by the coast guard, 674 migrants, were on board a fishing boat 190 kilometers (124 miles) off the coast of Italy's Calabria region, but some had to be pulled from the water.
All of those rescued were brought to ports in Calabria and Sicily.
Italian authorities also recovered five bodies of migrants on a boat that drifted about 200 kilometers off the Calabrian coast.
Separately, the Ocean Viking rescued 195 people, including many women and children, that were spotted in overcrowded rubber boats in the international waters off the coast of Libya.
The charity SOS Mediterranee that operates Ocean Viking said none of the people had life jackets.
On Saturday rescuers from the German NGO search and rescue ship Sea-Watch picked up 444 people from overcrowded smugglers' boats.
The Sea-Watch 3 vessel said it carried out the five operations over 24 hours, and said the rescued included a pregnant woman and a man who had suffered severe burns.
More migrants attempting dangerous sea crossing
The current weather is making conditions more favorable and arrivals in Italy are up by nearly one-quarter from 2021, with 34,013 recorded so far.
The southern Italian island of Lampedusa was also dealing with a renewed surge of migrants reaching its shore.
More than 400 asylum seekers and migrants had disembarked by Sunday morning after 350 people arrived on Saturday.
It is challenging the migrant reception center on the small island, which was already dealing with over 1,000 people.
Mediterranean countries on major migrant routes into Europe expect more than 150,000 arrivals this year as food shortages caused by the Ukraine conflict threaten a new migration wave from Africa and the Middle East.
lo/wd (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)