Nearly 5,800 migrants were plucked from boats off the coast of Libya and 10 bodies were recovered in less than 48 hours, Italy’s coast guard said, in one of the biggest rescue operations this year.
Two weeks after nearly 900 migrants drowned in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory, the flow of people desperate to reach Europe has accelerated as people smugglers take advantage of calmer seas.
Seven bodies were found on two large rubber boats packed with migrants and rescuers plucked from the sea the corpses of three others who had jumped into the water when they saw a merchant ship approaching, the coast guard said.
Separately, authorities in Egypt said that three people died when a migrant boat attempting to reach Greece sank off its coast. Thirty-one people were rescued.
Italy’s coast guard has coordinated the rescues by its own navy and coast guard, a French ship acting on behalf of the European border control agency, merchant ships, and one vessel run by the privately funded Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
Migrant deaths
About forty migrants died in the Mediterranean on Sunday, according to survivors of a journey across the sea, who arrived on the southern Italian island of Sicily, local Save the Children spokeswoman Giovanna Di Benedetto reported.
The deaths were reported by some of the roughly 240 migrants from Ghana, Gambia, Senegal and Ivory Coast who arrived in the port of Catania on the island.
A Maltese merchant ship rescued the migrants from two rubber boats on which they had set sail from Libya, where lawlessness has been exploited by traffickers who can charge those looking for a better life in Europe thousands of dollars.
Three of the roughly 137 survivors from one of the boats told the charity that dozens of people fell into the sea when they saw the merchant ship approach, and then drowned because they could not swim.
Some survivors said about 40 had died while others simply said “lots” of people had lost their lives, Ms Di Benedetto said, adding that one dinghy may have exploded or deflated in the heat of the sun.
About 100 people were on the other boat, from which there were no reported deaths.
There are at least 32 minors among the survivors, two of whom are between five and seven-years-old, Save the Children said.
The news came as details emerged of the birth of a baby girl on board an Italian navy vessel after her mother was rescued from a migrant ship over the weekend.
The numbers risking the journey from north Africa in rickety boats have risen further in recent weeks.
Up to 900 migrants are believed to have drowned last month in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory.
About 1,800 people are believed to have died during the crossing from Africa to Europe so far this year.
The vast majority of the migrants leave from Libya. Some 51,000 have entered Europe by sea, 30,500 via Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.
Aegean sea rescue
Turkey’s coast guard has rescued more than 600 people trying to cross the Aegean sea over the last five days, including women and children fleeing war-torn Syria in rubber boats, a provincial governor’s office said on Tuesday.
More than 400 of the 636 rescued migrants were from Syria, while others were from Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma and some African countries, the office of the governor of the coastal Izmir province said in a statement.
Acting on tip-offs, the coast guard also detained a suspected human trafficker.
About 2 million Syrian refugees have fled the violence in their homeland and taken shelter in neighbouring Turkey.
Reuters