Italian coast guard and navy vessels are ferrying hundreds of migrants to shore after rescues in the Mediterranean SeaROME -- Italian coast guard and navy vessels on Saturday ferried hundreds of rescued migrants toward shore, while elsewhere in the Mediterranean Sea thousands of migrants overflowed from a shelter on a tiny tourist island. The coast guard said in a statement that overcrowding on two vessels and adverse sea and weather conditions had complicated rescue operations that began Friday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria. A 94-meter (310-foot) -long coast guard vessel took 584 migrants aboard, while two smaller coast guard motorboats took on 379 and then transferred them to an Italian naval vessel, which was headed to Augusta, a port in eastern Sicily, as migrant shelters in Calabria quickly filled up. The Turkish coast guard reported Saturday that its personnel rescued 11 migrants off the coast of Turkey's Aydin province after their rubber dinghy burst and started to take water. The bodies of five people were recovered, while a search for other possible survivors and victims continued, the coast guard said in a statement.

Source: ABC News March 11, 2023 20:59 UTC