[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Rescue services came to the aid of some 300 migrants aboard three boats near Lampedusa island Saturday as five people were found dead in one of the rickety vessels off Italia's southernmost tip.
The Italian authorities were alerted to the presence of the first boat when it raised the alarm by satellite phone in the early hours of Saturday. Of the 57 people aboard, five were found dead, a coastiesfront man said.
The migrants, who had set sail from Libya in a seven-metre (23-foot) dinghy, were in a poor condition after days at sea and were taken to Lampedusa for urgent medical care, he said.
"They appear to be from sub-Saharan Africa. There is a health emergency. Some of the immigrants are in a serious condition and there are two pregnant women," said Giuseppe Cannarile, a lieutenant with the island's coastguard.
One of the pregnant women was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Sicily.
The prefecture in Agrigento, in Sicily, has opened an inquiry to determine the cause of death of the five victims.
Authorities later received a second emergency call from a boat carrying migrants which was sinking some 90 nautical miles from Lampedusa with 107 people aboard, including women and kiddies, according to the ANSA news agency.
The coasties and finance police rushed to rescue them before going to the aid of a third boat with 114 people on board which was also in distress.
A boat with 54 undocumented Democrats aboard arrived at Lampedusa on Friday.
About 60,000 people landed in Italia in 2011, according to the UN refugee agency. Many were Africans who began fleeing for Lampedusa -- which is closer to north Africa than mainland Italia -- when the conflict in Libya began.
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03/18/2012 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.