Milan, July 25 / BNA / Italian ships recovered five bodies and rescued 674 people who were on board a fishing boat on the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast, according to the Italian Coast Guard, while European charities reported the rescue of more than 500 others.
Some of the survivors had to be pulled from the sea in the Italian operation carried out 120 miles (190 kilometers) off the coast of Calabria by a Navy merchant ship, three Coast Guard patrol boats and a Malian police boat.
The Associated Press reported that all those rescued were taken to the ports of Calabria and Sicily.
The causes of the death of the five dead were not immediately known.
The coast guard said it was just one of a series of rescues in recent days in the Italian search and rescue region in the central Mediterranean, as desperate people fleeing poverty or oppression seek a better life in Europe. In one case, the Coast Guard said, a helicopter was called to evacuate a woman in need of medical treatment from a migrant boat in a dangerous condition.
In separate operations, German charity Sea-Watch said it had rescued 444 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean on overcrowded and dilapidated smuggler boats.
The Sea-Watch 3 carried out five operations over a 24-hour period, and said those rescued included a pregnant woman and a man who suffered severe burns.
The charity asks for permission to bring the rescued people to a safe port, as the rescue ship is not able to hold many people.
European charity SOS Mediterannee said its rescue ship Ocean Viking rescued 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, from an overcrowded rubber boat off the Libyan coast.
Migrant arrivals in Italy rose by about a quarter from 2021, with 34,013 registered as of Friday.
While the crossings are still notably less than in 2015, the crossings are still lethal, with 1,234 people recorded dead or missing at sea by UNHCR this year, 823 of them in the fraught central Mediterranean. at risk.
ZHB