ROME (Sputnik) — The bodies of 10 migrants who had been traveling by sea from North Africa were recovered in the Mediterranean over the past 24 hours, the Italian Coast Guard said in a statement Saturday.
A total of 2,200 migrants have been rescued as part of 12 operations in the region since Friday night. The people were traveling on five wooden and 10 rubber boats from Libya to Italy, according to the authority.
Since 2015, Europe has been experiencing an acute migration crisis and struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people fleeing hostilities in the Middle Eastern and North African countries.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an estimated total of 60,521 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe via the so-called Mediterranean route since the beginning of 2017.
