Move FM Global News

MILAN, Italy: The Italian coastguard announced this week that it was carrying out operations to rescue two boats carrying 1,200 migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa.

One of the boats, which is carrying 400 people and is in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria, southern Italy, had previously been sighted in Maltese waters.

Earlier, German NGO Sea-Watch International, which had located the fishing boat with one of its planes, said one merchant ships in the area, had supplied fuel and water to the migrants, but Maltese authorities had ordered it not to conduct a rescue.

The other rescue operation, conducted by the Italian coastguard, was to aid a fishing boat carrying 800 people that was located over 120 miles southeast of Siracusa, in Sicily.

The Coast Guard said in a statement that this operation was complicated by the number of migrants on board the ship.