Italy co-ordinated the rescue of 2,600 migrants off Libya, three years to the day after 366 people died in a sinking that first alerted the world to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Numerous children were among those saved from distressed vessels on Monday, including 700 who had been crammed onto a fishing boat, the coastguard said.
Two women and a child had to be evacuated for medical treatment after suffering severe burns caused by spilled fuel during a rescue from a rubber dinghy by a boat operated by the Doctors without Borders (MSF) charity. 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. A total of 366 bodies were recovered in the hold or washed up on the coast of an island where Pope Francis had, a few months previously, railed against the "globalisation of indifference" towards the plight of migrants seeking better lives in Europe.