Italy rescues more than 1700 boat migrants in three days
Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:44pm GMT
ROME, July 15 (Reuters) - Italy's search and rescue mission saved more than
1,700 migrants in the Mediterranean in the past three days and found one
person dead on a half-submerged raft, the navy said on Tuesday.
This year's calmer summer weather has seen record numbers of people attempt
to cross the sea from North Africa to Italy, often on packed boats and
leaking rafts. Many are fleeing poverty, war and military conscription.
Italy's "Mare Nostrum" or "Our Sea" mission rescued more than 1,500 people
in the Strait of Sicily between Saturday and Monday and more than 200 more
from three rafts on Monday night, the navy said.
The rescue mission found one body on a sinking raft from it rescued another
12 people about 40 miles from the Libyan coast, the navy said.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that around 500 migrants
have died in the Mediterranean so far this year, compared to 700 during the
whole of last year.
At the frontier between Europe and Africa, Italy has long attracted seaborne
migrants, but civil war in Syria and forced military service in Eritrea have
triggered a recent surge.
Around 66,000 people have arrived via sea since January, the UNHCR
estimates, surpassing the previous record of around 62,000 for all of 2011,
year of the "Arab Spring" uprisings.
Crumbling order in Libya has also made it almost impossible to control the
number of boats leaving the country, often laden with people who have paid
traffickers more than $1,000 each.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has asked the United Nations to intervene to
contain the crisis in Libya and has called on the European Union to invest
in the region's border control agency. (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by
Raissa Kasolowsky)