More than 600 migrants have been rescued at sea over the last few days and taken to Porto Empedocle in Sicily.
Most arrivals have risked their lives to flee Libya which has been rocked increasingly by civil war for much of the last year.
Rescuers carried women and young children off a vessel while hundreds of others waited on board the ship to step onto day land.
Hundreds have died during the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.
Many Western countries have closed their embassies and evacuated their diplomats from Libya because of the rising danger.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Libyans too want to leave.
Their country’s plunge into anarchy has created an ideal environment for traffickers, who pack people fleeing war and poverty onto rickety boats that set sail for Europe — mainly aiming for nearby Italy.
In an interview at the Warsaw headquarters of EU border cooperation agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri said the numbers since January 1 of what his agency terms “irregular cr
