Rescuers are rushing to the aid of migrants in the Mediterranean amid poor weather conditions a day after a rubber boat carrying an unknown number of people flipped in heavy seas, Italy's coastguard says.
Italy's coastguard sent ships to help at least two different migrant boats on Tuesday amid two-metre waves and winds of up to 25 knots, said Mathilde Auvillain, spokeswoman for SOS Mediterranee on board the humanitarian group's Aquarius rescue vessel.
On Monday, an oil tanker pulled 15 people from the water about 30 nautical miles (55 km) off the Libyan coast after a rubber boat flipped in heavy seas, a coastguard spokesman said.
The survivors have since been taken on board a coastguard vessel and are being taken to Catania, Sicily, he said.
Auvillain said rubber boats are normally packed with about 120 migrants.
On Monday, the Aquarius recovered five dead bodies from a rubber dinghy and the crew saw another person drown but was not able to recover the body, she said.
A boy who was pulled from the water remained unconscious for two hours and a woman who had inhaled fuel fumes were evacuated from the Aquarius by helicopter.
In total, about 550 migrants, most of them from West Africa, were pulled to safety in five operations on Monday, the coastguard said.
The death toll in the Mediterranean has surged this year to 4271 as of November 14, compared to 3777 in the whole of 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Arrivals to Italy this year, now at about 167,000, have already exceeded last year's 154,000. While last year departures dropped off from October as the weather conditions worsened, this year the decline has been less pronounced, Interior Ministry data show.
Reuters
