Antonella Cinelli News

Calmer seas and Libya's lawlessness have opened the way for smugglers to ship thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean this week, in a striking reminder of how far Europe is from ending the migrant crisis. In just four days, Italy's coastguard and European vessels pulled 13,000 migrants from packed wooden boats and rubber dinghies crossing from Libya's coast through the Strait of Sicily, one of the shortest routes from North Africa. Images from rescue vessels showed migrants crammed into fragile boats, some in orange life jackets, others jumping into the water to swim as rescuers shouted for them to stop. Many were women and children, most of them Subsaharan Africans.

Some 50 migrants were found dead in the hold of a boat off the coast of Libya on Wednesday during a rescue operation which saved 430 other people, the Italian coast guard said. A spokeswoman for the Italian coast guard said the Swedish ship Poseidon, working with the European Union's Frontex border control agency, had gone to help the people on the boat where the bodies were found. Emergency calls for help have been received so far on Wednesday from 10 boats in difficulty around 30 miles (50 km) from the coast of Libya, the spokeswoman said. Five rescue operations have been concluded, but others are still underway. (Reporting by Antonella Cinelli, writing by Isla Binnie)

British and German warships made ready to sail for waters off Libya as Europe ramped up rescue operations in the Mediterranean after up to 900 desperate migrants drowned last weekend on a boat heading for Italy. Yet hours after European Union leaders agreed in Brussels on Thursday to treble funding for EU maritime missions and pledged more ships and aircraft, 14 clandestine migrants were killed when a train ploughed into dozens of Somalis and Afghans making their way in darkness along a rail track in a Macedonian gorge. The incident highlighted the variety of routes that growing numbers are taking to escape war and poverty in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and chance their luck in a wealthy region that offers, at best, a chilly welcome.

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.

Two Albanian seamen were killed on Tuesday during the salvage of a multi-deck car ferry that caught fire off Greece's Adriatic Coast two days ago, killing at least 11 people, with dozens more missing. The men were killed when a cable connecting their tugboat to the smouldering hulk of the Norman Atlantic snapped and hit them, an Albanian port authority official and Italy's navy said. As salvage operations continued, there was confusion over the numbers on the ship, with dozens…

Costa Cruises has chosen a consortium including oil service company Saipem to scrap the hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise liner which capsized off the Tuscany coast in 2012, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. The green light from the Italian government is still missing, the sources added. Besides Saipem the consortium includes Genoa-based companies Mariotti and San Giorgio, one of the sources said. Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, and Saipem declined to comment. The luxury liner hit rocks more than two years ago as it sailed close to the island of Giglio, killing 32 people. Since then, it has been hauled upright but still rests where it capsized off the coast of the holiday island.   Reporting by Antonella Cinelli and Stephen Jewkes