More than 1,000 boat migrants arrive in Italy

More than 1,000 boat migrants arrived on the coast of Italy after crossing the Mediterranean Sea on Saturday.
During the previous night, a boat with 487 people reached the port city of Crotone in the Calabria region in the south of the country, the ANSA news agency reported. The coastguard escorted the boat into the harbour.
In the morning, a coastguard vessel brought a total of 584 migrants to the port of the city of Reggio Calabria. The people had previously been taken on board from overcrowded boats on the high seas.
Because of the difficult weather conditions and the large number of people, the operation was "exceptionally complex," the authorities said.
Hundreds of migrants were still drifting in the sea on boats that were actually unseaworthy.
Italy's coastguard has been heavily criticized in recent days for initially failing to come to the aid of a boat carrying more than 150 migrants at the end of February. The boat capsized.
On Saturday - two weeks after the accident - emergency forces pulled the body of a girl out of the water. In total, at least 74 people died.
Italy's Interior Ministry has counted several thousand boat migrants arriving on the mainland or on the island of Lampedusa in recent days.
By Thursday evening, more than 15,800 migrants had been registered since the beginning of the year. In the two previous years, there were about 6,000 at this point.