Rome: In four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, more than 1,400 migrants have been saved from overcrowded boats, including a sailboat, the Italian coast guard reported on Wednesday.
The sailboat off the coast of Calabria, in the "toe" of the Italian peninsula, was carrying 47 migrants, including two children who required immediate medical attention. A coast guard motorboat came to their aid early on Tuesday.
According to the statement, the rescue operations in the Ionian Sea off the east coast of Calabria started late on Monday night and finished in the wee hours of Wednesday. A coast guard vessel picked up about 590 migrants from a fishing boat before later picking up about 650 migrants from a different fishing boat.
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A fourth boat with 130 migrants on board received assistance from a coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship.
The nationalities of the passengers and the paths taken by the migrant vessels were not immediately disclosed by the authorities. But typically, smugglers launch crowded, unseaworthy boats from Turkiye's coast, from where many boats with migrants are seen off the Ionian Sea.
A migrant boat travelling along that route earlier this year collided with a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and disintegrated. At least 94 migrants died, while 80 others made it.
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Criminal activity surrounding that shipwreck, including the involvement of several border police officers operating boats off Italy's extensive coastline, is being investigated. Four alleged smugglers have been arrested.
Prosecutors also want to know if rescue operations could have started hours earlier. Due to reportedly rough seas, Italian border police boats returned to port; by the time a coast guard vessel, which is better equipped to navigate in rough seas, arrived at the scene, bodies had already been submerged. In that instance, a surveillance plane flown by Frontex, the European Union's border monitoring force, had spotted the migrant boat several hours earlier.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the coast guard claimed that a Frontex surveillance plane's crew had spotted a fishing boat carrying 590 migrants. The coast guard reported that among the resources used in the rescue efforts for the two fishing boats were a Frontex patrol boat and a Frontex support vessel.
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One of the organisations signalling the need for rescue for the 130 people aboard the fourth boat was Alarm Phone, a nongovernmental organisation that frequently receives satellite calls from migrant vessels in distress and relays the information to maritime authorities in Italy and Malta.