‘2,000 migrants rescued off Libya’

Around 2,000 migrants were plucked to safety off the coast of Libya in the latest series of rescue operations in the Mediterranean, the Italian coastguard said.

“The coastguards have coordinated 15 rescue operations, some 2,000 migrants are safe and sound,” they said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a boat belonging to medical charity Doctors without Borders docked in the Sicilian port city of Palermo on Friday with 592 people on board, including 119 women and 9 children.

Four of the female migrants who arrived in Palermo were pregnant and some of the children had travelled without an adult. Seven of the migrants were taken to hospitals in the city with minor ailments, doctors said.

The passengers were among 2,000 migrants rescued on Thursday in the Mediterranean from 15 boats. Many thousands more have been rescued in recent weeks and hundreds are believed to have perished in a spate of shipwrecks.

Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi denied on Thursday that Italy was being “invaded” by the ongoing influx of migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa.

A similar number made the treacherous sea journey over the same period last year.