More than 600 people aboard a drifting fishing boat were rescued on Saturday by a merchant ship and coast guards off Calabria, in the far south of Boot, Italy.
They were unloaded in several ports of Sicily.
Authorities also recovered five bodies that died under circumstances that are still undetermined.
About 522 people arrived on Lampedusa Island, specifically from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, on fifteen separate boats from Tunisia and Libya overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
According to Italian media, the reception center of this small rock closer to Africa than Italy is overwhelmed. The Ansa agency says there are currently 1,200 homes, with a capacity of 250-300 people.
In addition, maritime rescue NGOs continue to recover hundreds of migrants lost in the Mediterranean.
SeaWatch said on Sunday that it conducted four rescue operations on Saturday. “On SeaWatch 3, we have 428 people, including women and children, nine months pregnant and critically ill patients,” she said on her Twitter account.
OceanViking of the NGO SOS Mediterranei said it had recovered 87 people, including 57 lone minors, who were trapped in “an overcrowded inflatable boat in distress in international waters off Libya”.
According to the Interior Ministry, between January 1 and July 22, 34,000 people arrived in Italy by sea, compared to 25,500 in the same period of 2021 and 10,900 in 2020.
The central Mediterranean migration route is one of the most dangerous in the world. The International Organization for Migration estimates the number of dead and missing at 990 since the start of the year.
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