One boat contained 500 migrants, who had been squeezed onto the wooden vessel.
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Italy’s navy and coastguard, ships patrolling on a European Union anti-smuggling mission, vessels run by humanitarian groups and a commercial tugboat aided in the rescues off the coast of Libya. Rescue swimmers from MOAS were able to save 134 people from that boat, including 99 men, 29 women and six children.
When panic broke out on the boat, many people who could not swim fell or jumped into the water.
Though the initial reports were an:”unidentified speedboat” attacked the boat, forcing the crew to take refuge in a safe room, Libya’s unity government later confirmed the boat was part of their Navy, and that they “fired warning shots” at the boat after mistaking it for an oil smuggler.
“People were jumping out, fumes were coming up, people were fainting, so it was awful”.
Stone said it had been an intense morning, with charities working alongside the Italian Coastguard for six hours to rescue migrants from “flimsy dinghies”.
It comes after a huge wave of smuggler boat crossings saw 14,000 migrants rescued in just five days last week.
Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War Two is now focused on Italy, at Europe’s southern frontier, where some 115,000 people had arrived by the end of August, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
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Some 117,590 migrants arrived in Italy between the start of 2016 and September 1, around the same level as a year ago. In only one week, from Sunday Aug. 28 until Friday Sept. 2, around 12,000 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, the International Organization for Migration told ABC News. Following the closure of the Greece border a year ago, the Libya-Italy route is being used by migrants to reach Europe.
