Francesco Perrotti, the harbormaster in Corigliano Calabro, said 360 migrants were found on the cargo ship Ezadeen74 under 18 years of age and four pregnant.
The Red Cross arrived to greet the migrants leaving the ship. All of them appeared to be in good health and nobody was hospitalized or quarantined, he said.
The migrants were being sent to reception facilities.
Authorities responded late Thursday to a distress call from the Ezadeen, Italy’s coast guard said.
It’s the second rescue of a crewless vessel off Italy’s coast, in what appears to be a worrying new tactic by people traffickers who either abandon the ship or mix with the passengers.
Overnight, the Ezadeen was at a standstill 58 miles (93 kilometers) off the city of Crotone in the Ionian Sea, the coast guard said, where rescuers were trying to restart the boat’s engines.
–
A spokeswoman for the EU Commission said Friday that it was closely following the Ezadeen situation.
“The rescues of the Blue Sky M two days ago and of the Ezadeen show that smugglers are finding new ways to enter EU territory,” she said.
“To prevent such events and to protect the lives of migrants, fighting smuggling will continue to be a priority under the Commission’s agenda for comprehensive migration in 2015.”
More than 207,000 people crossed the Mediterranean for Europe illegally in 2014, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N. refugee agency, said last month — almost three times the previous high of about 70,000 in 2011. That’s 60% of roughly 348,000 boat migrants worldwide last year.
“Europe, facing conflicts to its south (Libya), east (Ukraine) and south-east (Syria/Iraq) is seeing the largest number of sea arrivals,” the UNHCR said.
More than 3,400 of those seeking to reach Europe last year died, many of them drowning after being trafficked in unseaworthy vessels from the shores of the Middle East and North Africa across the Mediterranean.
Journalists Barbie Latza Nadeau and Livia Borghese reported from Rome and Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported from London. CNN’s Sweelin Ong and Sara Delgrossi contributed to this report.
