Angelino Alfano News

At least forty people suffocated in an overcrowded boat carrying around 400 migrants while crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe on Saturday. Many of the migrants were saved as the boat issued a distress call and was intercepted off the Libyan coast. The rescue operation, which is conducted by the Italian navy, is still ongoing and most of the passengers have been saved. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said that about 320 people have been rescued, the BBC reports. Suffocation is the cause of the deaths of the migrants, who were located in a confined space below the deck of the boat. Europe continues to be affected by an unprecedented influx of refugees, with 250 000 migrants having crossed into the continent by boat this year alone.

Ships carrying rescued migrants arrive in Italian ports; Eight more suspected of human trafficking detained in Sicily. As many as 5,000 migrants a week could arrive in Italy by sea from North African ports in the next five months unless something is done about the issue, according to an interior ministry projection. The figures, published on Thursday by the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero and confirmed by a ministry source, estimated that as many as 200,000 could arrive by the end of this year. Arrivals of migrants usually spike in the spring and summer months because of better weather in the Mediterranean but the situation is expected to worsen because of growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya, from where most of the migrants depart.

At least 10 North African migrants died when their rubber boat overturned in the southern Mediterranean while almost a thousand more from a total of seven vessels were rescued in a single day this week, Italian and Tunisian authorities said on Wednesday. The Italian coast guard said in a statement that one of its ships in the area had rescued 121 people after their boat capsized on Tuesday some 50 miles north of Libya. Ten bodies were recovered. Tunisian naval forces rescued all 81 migrants onboard another boat that had started taking on water off near the Tunisian island of Djerba on Tuesday night, the country's defence ministry said.

ROME, Feb 11 (Reuters) - More than 300 people probably died this week after attempting to reach Italy from Libya on four separate boats in stormy weather, the U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday after speaking to a handful of survivors. The sharp increase in the number of migrants dying while trying to cross the Mediterranean has reignited criticism of Italy's decision last year to end a full-scale search-and-rescue mission, known as Mare Nostrum, in order to save costs. Mare Nostrum was replaced by a European Union border-control mission called Triton, which employs fewer ships and has a much smaller area of operation. Among the latest incidents…

Inadequate naval patrols means ever more migrants from Africa and the Middle East will die trying to cross the Mediterranean, aid agencies warned on Tuesday, as Italy appealed for a "more vigorous" European response to tackle the crisis. The death toll in the Mediterranean since the start of the year stands at 50 against just 12 in the same period in 2014. In the latest tragedy involving migrants, 29 people died of hypothermia on Monday on the exposed deck of a small Italian naval vessel after it rescued them in rough seas from a dinghy adrift near Libya.

Rights groups warn of risk of more deaths; EU mission Triton will have more limited scope. Italy said on Friday it would close a sea rescue mission that has saved the lives of more than 100,000 migrants from Africa and the Middle East, a move one rights group warned could lead to a "surge of deaths" in the Mediterranean. Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the Mare Nostrum or "Our Sea" mission would end to make way for a smaller European Union scheme - and to help relieve the strain on Italy's public finances amid a three-year economic slump. "Mare Nostrum is closing down because it was an emergency operation," Alfano told a news conference.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it would launch an EU version of Italy's sea rescue operation to help it deal with the droves of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in crowded boats from North Africa, something Italy has repeatedly called for. Europe's border control agency Frontex will take over the new operation, dubbed "Frontex Plus", by merging two existing ones and eventually it will replace Italy's costly mission to patrol the seas for boat migrants. "The aim is to put in place an enlarged Frontex Plus to complement what Italy has been doing," said Cecilia Malmstrom, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, on Wednesday. The civil war in Syria and breakdown of order in Libya have pushed the number of sea-borne arrivals in Italy to a record of more than 100…

At least 25 migrants die during weekend Mediterranean crossings; Italy says has rescued almost 4,000 in last 48 hours. Italy's search and rescue services have found six more bodies in the Mediterranean to add to the death toll of 19 over the weekend, the navy said on Monday, with no let-up in the record numbers risking the perilous crossing to Europe from Africa. The navy said it had rescued almost 4,000 migrants over the weekend and Italian vessels were continuing to look for victims of a boat which capsized north of the Libyan coast on Sunday evening. The names and nationalities of the casualties were not released. Record high number of migrants by sea to Italy this year are putting enormous pressure on the Italian coast guard and navy.

Two boat migrants died among almost 1,500 rescued by Italy in the last 24 hours, authorities said on Friday as the total number reaching Italian shores this year passed 100,000. Italy's interior minister said it was "proud to be saving lives" of migrants who have been streaming out of North Africa in rickety boats in increasing numbers for years and without its efforts the Mediterranean would have become a "lake of death". But Angelino Alfano repeated Rome's position that the burden for patrolling the sea and saving migrants from Africa's shores must quickly pass to the European Union as a whole. Late on Thursday, 279 migrants on a boat that had departed from Libya were brought ashore near Ragusa in southeast Sicily…

Nineteen people died trying to reach Italy on a boat packed with hundreds of migrants, probably poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes from its engines, said the Italian Navy on Saturday, which has rescued more than 4,000 migrants in the last three days. Eighteen bodies were found in the hold of the boat, said a navy spokesman, along with three very ill men who were rushed to the Italian island of Lampedusa but one died en route. The two surviving men were taken by helicopter to a hospital in the Sicilian capital of Palermo, the spokesman said. He said carbon monoxide fumes produced by the boat's engine likely caused the deaths. A similar incident last month killed 30.

Italy is in talks with other European Union states about sharing the burden of rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean in crowded boats from North Africa, senior officials meeting in Milan said on Tuesday. So far this year, more than 63,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), surpassing the previous record of around 62,000 set in the whole of 2011, the year of the "Arab Spring" uprisings. But more than 500 have died trying to make the perilous sea crossing, including 12 on Sunday when their boat capsized off the coast of the Libyan Tripoli, the UNHCR said on Tuesday. On Tuesday, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano repeated a call for Europe's border control agency Frontex to take over Italy's mission…

Migrants arriving on boats in southern Italy say 81 other people travelling with them have died or gone missing during their sea journeys from north Africa, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday. A group of 27 migrants picked up on Tuesday by Italy's naval rescue mission and brought to the town of Catania said there had been 75 other people on their boat, who were feared drowned, the UNHCR said in a statement. Other migrants arriving in Sicily's Porto Empedocle said two of the party they travelled with had died and four had disappeared. Authorities said the death toll on another packed fishing boat, discovered by an Italian rescue mission on Monday, had reached 45. The victims are believed to have suffocated.