Rescued migrants arrive in Italian ports

Nearly 5,800 people, rescued from Mediterranean Sea off Libyan coast over the past 48 hours, reach Italian ports.

Nearly 5,800 migrants rescued from boats off the coast of Libya over the past 48 hours have arrived on various ports across Italy, with about 800 of them making it to the port of Pozzallo, according to coastguard officials.

The development comes as part of European coastguard agencies' biggest rescue operation this year.
Al Jazeera's Stephanie Dekker, reporting on Monday from Pozzallo, on the island of Sicily, said that while the boats had docked almost five hours ago, most of the occupants had yet to disembark.
"We're being told that there is a rigorous one-by-one medical check-up going on to ensure that people do not carry transmittable diseases," she said.
"You can see that people are getting agitated. It has been a very stressful journey for them."
Seven bodies were found on two large rubber boats packed with migrants, and rescuers picked from the sea the corpses of three others who had jumped into the water when they saw a merchant ship approaching, the Italian coastguard said.
Two weeks after nearly 900 boat people drowned in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory, the flow of people desperate to reach a better life in Europe has accelerated as people smugglers take advantage of calmer seas.
Italy's coastguard has coordinated the rescue efforts by its own navy and coastguard, a French ship acting on behalf of the European border control agency, merchant ships and one vessel run by the privately funded Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
Separately, authorities in Egypt said that three people died when a migrant boat attempting to reach Greece sank off its coast. They said 31 people were rescued.