Italy coastguard: 3,000 migrants rescued in one day in Mediterranean

Italy’s coastguard has successfully coordinated the rescue of about 3,000 migrants in the Mediterranean, after receiving distress calls from more than 20 overcrowded vessels drifting in waters off Libya.

One of the biggest single-day rescue operations to date appeared to have been concluded on Saturday without any reports of casualties.

Two navy ships, the Cigala Fulgosi and the Vega, picked up 507 and 432 migrants respectively from two wooden boats in danger of sinking just off Libya, said the navy.

The coastguard said its patrol boats had boarded a total of just less than 1,000 people from various unseaworthy fishing boats and inflatables that had left Libya overnight on Friday-Saturday.

At least another 1,000 rescued migrants and refugees were reported to be headed for Italian ports on other boats as the wave of new arrivals triggered increasingly virulent attacks on centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi’s handling of the migration crisis.

“This must [be] a joke. We are using our own forces to do the people smugglers’ business for them and ensure we are invaded,” said Maurizio Gasparri, a senator for Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration Northern League, called on the government to park the migrants on disused Italian oil rigs off Libya.

“Help them, rescue them and take care of them: but don’t let them land here,” wrote Salvini on his Facebook page.

The rescued migrants included 311, with a newborn baby, who were on a boat belonging to humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières that was expected to dock on Monday in Vibo Valentia in Calabria, according to port authorities there.

A further 370 had been picked up by the Italian customs police and were headed for Messina in Sicily, while the Norwegian boat Siem Pilot was also carrying hundreds of people to port.

Just over 170,000 migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and south Asia landed at Italy’s southern ports in 2014 after being rescued in the Mediterranean, while the total for 2015 has already topped 104,000.

A further 135,000-plus have landed in Greece since January, and more than 2,300 people have died at sea while trying to make it to Europe with the help of traffickers.

Police in Palermo, Sicily, announced on Saturday that they arrested six Egyptian nationals on suspicion of people-smuggling following the rescue of a stricken boat on 19 August.

Testimony from the 432 migrants on board suggested the vessel had been packed with more than 10 times the number of people it was designed for, with many of the passengers, including a number of women and children, locked below decks.

They had each paid the traffickers €2,000 (£1,450) for the passage from Egypt to Italy, according to statements given to police.

On board, the crew were reported to have demanded further payment to allow those locked in the hold to come up temporarily for air.

Humanitarian organisations have called on European governments to shoulder more of the burden of absorbing the waves of asylum-seeking migrants and to help create safer routes for them to reach Europe.