An Italian navy ship carried a dead body among the 900 illegal migrants brought to shore on Thursday in the Sicilian port of Augusta.
The men, women and children were picked up a day earlier from three boats drifting in the Mediterranean. The coastguard said bad weather meant none were spotted at sea on Thursday.
Navy ship commander Francesco Coronas said: “One migrant was found dead on the boat. We couldn’t do much about it. We tried to resuscitate him but it didn’t work out.”
A Dutch container ship helped in the rescue of at least 300 hundred people from one vessel.
Among those picked up were many Syrians escaping the country’s 4-year-old civil war.
Read the International Organisation for Migrant’s latest update on migrant numbers.
12,460 #migrants arrived by sea to Italy in May, total no. arrivals since Jan 2015 is 38,690 http://t.co/2PuuDRK9ze pic.twitter.com/uZ5qjpvdDa— IOM (@IOM_news) May 20, 2015
They’ve joined more than 36,500 migrants who have reached Ital
