More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said on Wednesday.
There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, onboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, a coast guard statement said.
They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early on Tuesday, it said.
Photo: EPA
The rescues began late on Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast, it said.
One coast guard vessel rescued about 590 migrants from a fishing boat, and later took on about 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said.
A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard, it said.
Authorities did not immediately give details on the nationalities of the passengers or routes taken by the migrant vessels.
However, many boats with migrants sighted off the Ionian Sea generally set out from Turkey’s coast, where smugglers launch crowded boats.
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Earlier this year, a migrant boat navigating on that route slammed into a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and broke apart. At least 94 migrants died and 80 survived.
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