Officials will try to identify them before sending them to shelters.
Advertisement
The Italian ship which led the rescue, the Bettica, was taking the survivors to Sicily on Thursday. Others with their arms wrapped in gauze walked gingerly down the ramp into Porto Empedocle off Agrigento. About 240 women and children had already been rescued, but an unknown number were trapped in the hull.
This combination of handout pictures released on May 25, 2016 by the Italian navy shows the shipwreck of an overcrowded boat of refugees off the Libyan coast.
The navy said five bodies were recovered. They have mainly landed in Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain.
“Most of them do not know how to swim – to them the water is like a torrent of lava, for us, if you fall in you’re dead”.
Separately, the European Union s naval force announced that up to 30 migrants were believed to have died after another ship flipped over on Thursday, drawing rescuers to the scene who threw life jackets and floats to those in the water.
Marco Di Milla, a spokesman for the Italian coastguard, confirmed news of the shipwreck, locating it about 55 kilometres off Libyan shores, said coastguard units also rushed to the scene, but did not confirm any deaths.
Migrants come to Calais hoping make it to the United Kingdom by boat across the English Channel or in a auto or truck through the tunnel connecting the two countries. At its peak, it hosted some 14,000 people trapped by Balkan border closures. Officials said 88 people had been rescued.
“That probably is a record”, said coast guard spokesman Commander Cosimo Nicastro, noting that previous highs have been in the range of 5,000 to 6,000 over two days.
Colonel Ayoub Gassim said they were found in two groups – one of 550 near the western coastal city of Sabratha, and the second of 216 off Zwara. He added that the rescue missions took place on Thursday.
He followed his tweet with another statement saying that the boat sailed from the Libyan port of Sabrata and that many on board were Moroccans.
The figures show there have been 174,395 irregular arrivals into Europe in the first quarter of this year, more than eight times the number in the same period last year.
The navy said its Bettica patrol boat had spotted “a boat in precarious conditions off the coast of Libya with numerous migrants aboard” but the trawler overturned shortly afterwards “due to overcrowding”.
Most of the 8,400 people at the camp when the police operation began on Tuesday refused to cooperate, police said. However, Sea Watch, a private rescue mission, said that two boats sank out of the 16 total boats that set out to the waters earlier in the day.
Advertisement
Italian Navy ship Vega plucked about 135 people off a “half-submerged” large rubber boat in one of 17 operations coordinated by the coastguard on Friday.
