Nine dead as Italy rescues 6,055 migrants on disaster anniversary
Italy's coastguard said nine corpses were recovered in operations in which 6,055 people were rescued off Libya Monday, three years to the day after 366 people died in the sinking that first alerted the world to the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
The operations had taken place in an area around 30 miles north of the Libyan capital Tripoli. The coastguard coordinated the rescue of a total of 39 distressed vessels, the bulk of them overcrowded rubber dinghies but also including five converted fishing boats crammed full of people, mostly Africans. Most of the minors were unaccompanied and nine were under five years old. At least 10 of the 191 women on board were pregnant. In the disaster three years ago, a fishing boat packed with some 500 people caught fire and sank rapidly in darkness just off the outlying Italian island of Lampedusa in the night of October 2-3.
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