UPDATED: Italy rescues more migrants in Mediterranean

Two fishing boats respectively carrying 115 and 125 migrants and refugees arrived in Lampedusa on Wednesday, taking to 821 the number of people arriving on the tiny island in 15 separate landings since midnight.
The numbers are updated to 11 am local time.

The fishing vessels both departed from Zuwara in Libya and the people on board were from Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.
Also on Wednesday morning, three smaller vessels carrying a total of 146 migrants and refugees were rescued by Coast Guard vessels in the Italian search and rescue area and accompanied to port.
All three boats had departed from Tunisia.

Italy has rescued 47 boats carrying around 1,600 migrants in the central Mediterranean sea on Monday and Tuesday and brought them ashore to the island of Lampedusa.

Italy’s coastguard said in a statement late on Monday that it had taken to safety around 1,200 migrants but that at least 23 people were missing and one body was recovered at sea following three shipwrecks.

Another 12 boats with around 400 migrants were rescued on Tuesday, according to news agency ANSA.

The past months have seen a sharp increase in migrant boats trying to reach the Italian coast from Tunisia, which has become a more accessible departure point after crackdowns on human trafficking in Libya in recent months.

With the number of people crossing the Mediterranean in smugglers’ boats on the rise, Rome’s conservative government has urged Brussels to do more to reduce irregular arrivals.

On Monday, Italy offered Tunisia a prospect of money in exchange for economic and political reforms as European Union foreign ministers discussed in Luxembourg how to respond to growing instability in the African country.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi will visit Tunisia later this week, together with EU’s top migrants official and French counterpart.