The UN refugee agency said that 326 people have died or gone missing in the attempt to reach Greece via the Eastern Mediterranean from Turkey and other states in 2022. That's nearly three times as many as in 2021.
Italy's interior minister has denied that political considerations play a part in the assigning of a port for NGO migrant rescue ships to disembark those on board as number of arrivals surges.
A two-year-old girl from the Ivory Coast has died in a shipwreck some 10 miles south of Lampedusa. She had departed from Sfax, in Tunisia, with her mother and dozens of other migrants. Meanwhile, two migrant rescue vessels are expected in the port of Livorno.
The Italian island of Lampedusa saw the arrival of more than 700 migrants and refugees on Wednesday and Thursday. Over 1,300 people are now staying at local hotspots, built for just 350. A baby was found dead on a boat that crossed from Tunisia.
Five boats carrying 72 migrants independently reached Mallorca and neighboring islands on Wednesday. The arrival of migrant boats on Spain's Balearic Islands is rare, but numbers have increased in recent years.