MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The coast guard also found the dead bodies of 10 people, the newspaper said on Sunday. Three of them were lifted up from the water – the migrants threw themselves into the sea when they saw a merchant ship approaching, and drowned. The other seven bodies were found on two rubber boats packed with migrants.
The rescue operation was one of the biggest ones this year, according to Le Figaro.
All of the saved migrants, whose nationalities were not immediately determined, were taken to Italy. The French newspaper reported citing Italian authorities that a total of seventeen boats with migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean over the weekend.
Italy faces serious problems with undocumented immigration from North Africa. Hundreds of people are rescued by the Italian Navy every month in the Mediterranean between Sicily and the coasts of Libya and Tunisia.
In 2014, Europe launched a joint operation "Triton" to protect EU maritime borders. The operation, coordinated by Italy, has been declared ineffective by various international experts, including the UN Refugee Agency.
