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The Italian Navy rescued 100 stranded migrants in the Mediterranean on Thursday, while 178 others were taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa and Malta, officials said.
In addition, 149 East African migrants, including 65 minors and 13 babies under one year old, were flown in from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). ) from Libya to Rome.
Trapped by renewed conflict in Tripoli, many were malnourished or in need of medical care.
The Italian navy said that the lives of the 100 people saved were in imminent danger after the engine failure of his boat in bad weather. Only a few of them had life jackets.
The migrants, who sent an SOS signal to Alarm Phone, an emergency phone line specializing in rescue in the Mediterranean, had announced that a five-year-old girl on board had perished, but the navy had said that no one had been killed.
Italian far-right minister Matteo Salvini said migrants would be taken to the port of Genoa in the north of the country.
Alarm Phone, which is operated by the German badociation Watch the Med, said the Italian ship could have rescued migrants in distress "almost a day ago".
The Maltese Navy previously stated that she had saved 75 migrants found hanging on a tuna pad while they were trying to make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.
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The UN refugee agency said it spoke to people rescued upon their arrival in Malta "exhausted, hungry and extremely relieved to be ashore after three days at sea".
Malta asked the EU to help manage the flow of migrants, as its much larger neighbor, Italy, began to turn away.
The island's 450,000 inhabitants is a common destination for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa, and an uncompromising stance on the part of Italy has increased pressure on the country. # 39; island.
UNHCR said new arrivals had increased the number of people landed since the beginning of the year to 673 in Malta, compared with four at the same time last year.
According to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, some 1,561 migrants landed in Italy this year, compared with 13,430 in the same period in 2018.
The majority of military ships patrolling Libya in recent years have since retreated, and rescue vessels from charities that have saved those attempting the dangerous crossing have been hit by judicial or administrative orders.
Several hundred migrants still leave Libya each week, even though most are intercepted by the Libyan coastguard and have returned.
The German Sea-Watch rescue badociation released Thursday footage taken on May 23 by its Moonbird reconnaissance aircraft, showing migrants falling off a deflated dinghy, with at least one drowning.
Sea-Watch said that an Italian military ship was about 30 nautical miles away at that time. He simply sent a helicopter to monitor the situation until a Libyan launch came in to snatch the water survivors.
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