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More than 600 migrants rescued in Mediterranean, says Italian coastguard Sorry - this page has been removed.
(4 months later)
More than 600 migrants were rescued from the Mediterranean between Sicily and north Africa this weekend, according to the Italian coastguard. One man is feared drowned. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
The coastguard said it had picked up 520 migrants in the Strait of Sicily between Thursday night and Friday, and then went to help a merchant ship 60 miles north of Tripoli that had picked up 93 others. Another ship carrying a Singaporean flag picked up a further 78 migrants. It was not immediately clear where these migrants came from.
Further east, 270 Syrian refugees, including 30 children, were rescued off northern Cyprus overnight when their ship’s engine broke down, the Kibris Postasi website in Nicosia reported. It was thought to have sailed from Turkey. For further information, please contact:
Italy said last month it planned to close its “Mare Nostrum” mission, which has saved more than 100,000 migrants fleeing war, poverty and human rights abuses in Africa.
Twenty-one EU countries are contributing to a smaller mission called Triton, overseen by border control agency Frontex, which will patrol 30 nautical miles from Italy’s coast.
The Mare Nostrum naval mission started a year ago after more than 360 people, mostly Eritreans, drowned when their boat capsized a mile from the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
The €114m ((£90m) cost of the year-long mission prompted calls from rightwing politicians for the money to be spent on dragging Italy’s economy out of a three-year recession.
Cyprus, about 60 miles (96km) west of Syria, is rarely the destination of choice for thousands fleeing Eritrea. It is split into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north and an internationally recognised republic in the south.
Turkey is hosting an estimated 1.6 million Syrian refugees.