Almost 1,300 migrants arrived in Sicily on rescue ships over the weekend after crossing the Mediterranean, while a 16-year-old boy died on one of the ships, Italy’s Coast Guard said. Another 500 migrants were heading to Sicily and expected to arrive in the next couple of days, after being picked up from flimsy boats off the coast of Libya. Proactive Open Arms, which operated one of the rescue ships, also said on Twitter that five migrants had drowned before one of the rescues, but a Coast Guard spokesman could not confirm the deaths. “Unfortunately one of the migrants ... died on the Siem Pilot on Friday morning as a result of an illness,” said the ship’s commander Jorgen Berg. The agreement aims to stop more migrants for setting out for Europe in part by funding migrant camps in run by the UN-backed government.

Source: The North Africa Journal March 05, 2017 19:07 UTC