13,000 refugees rescued in Mediterranean in one week

More than 660 asylum-seekers saved by Italian coastguard as United Nations warn that hundreds may have perished while crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Africa

A flotilla of ships saved 668 people from boats in the Mediterranean Sea on Saturday, authorities in Italy said, bringing the week’s total of refugees plucked from flimsy vessels to 13,000 people.

The rescues by the Italian coast guard and navy ships, aided by Irish and German vessels and humanitarian groups, are the latest by a multinational patrol south of the Italian island of Sicily.

The latest figures come a day after 45 migrants died in a shipwreck and more than 2,000 were rescued from boats in the Mediterranean.

Warner spring weather has led to a surge of people attempting the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe. The United Nations and the Italian coastguard have said that hundreds of people may have drowned, though there are no official estimates of total casualties.

The Irish military said the vessel Le Roisin saved 123 people from a 12m-long (40-ft) rubber dinghy and recovered a male body. A German ship was involved in four separate rescue operations, the Italian coast guard said on Saturday evening.

Meanwhile, with shelters filling up in Sicily, the Italian navy vessel Vega headed toward Reggio Calabria, a southern Italian mainland port, bringing 135 survivors and 45 bodies from a rescue a day earlier. The Vega was due to dock on Sunday.

Other survivors who arrived on Saturday in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo told authorities they had witnessed a fishing boat filled with“ hundreds” of people sink on Thursday, a Save The Children spokeswoman, Giovanna Di Benedetto, told The Associated Press by telephone from Sicily.

According to survivors, two smugglers’ fishing boats and a dinghy set sail on Wednesday night from Libya’s coast. Di Benedetto said the survivors were among 500 or so aboard the one fishing boat that didn’t sink and the dinghy.

“All of this must be verified, of course,” said Di Benedetto, but if the survivors’ accounts bear out, as many as 400 people could have drowned, with only a very few of those on the vessel that sank able to reach the other boats.

Authorities say many boats in the past few years apparently have sunk without a trace in the Mediterranean, with the dead never found. Often the only news about them comes when family members in Africa or Europe tell authorities that their loved ones never arrived after setting sail from Libya.

Under a European Union deal, tens of thousands of those rescued at sea and seeking asylum were supposed to be relocated to other EU nations from Italy and Greece, where most of the refugees have landed. But with resentment building in some European countries about taking in more people, the plan never really took off, and only a small percentage of those slated for relocation have actually been moved.

Images from the crew of the Italian Navy ship Bettica showed on the moment on Wednesday a blue fishing boat capsized, sending hundreds of refugees into the sea. Five bodies were recovered and 562 people were saved.