More than 1,200 boat migrants arrive on Italy's Lampedusa - two dead

More than 1,200 migrants have reached the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa in just 24 hours, the coastguard reported on Monday.
A migrant boat sank in international waters near the island during the night. A fishing boat rescued 34 people and recovered one body.
The rescued people were taken on board a patrol boat of the Italian coastguard and brought to Lampedusa. The survivors said that about 20 people were still missing.
A second boat sank later just off the coast of Lampedusa. Forty-two people were reportedly rescued by the coastguard, including five women and three minors. Three people were still missing.
The rescued people are from Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone and South Sudan.
In a third shipwreck, everyone was saved, but one body was recovered. Emergency services continued to search for all missing persons.
The migrants were taken to Lampedusa's initial reception camp. It has space for around 400 people but is overcrowded due to previous arrivals.
In total, more than 1,200 boat migrants have arrived on Lampedusa since Sunday with 35 boats, the coastguard said.
Lampedusa is located between Sicily and North Africa, around 190 kilometres from the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax. Fatal accidents sometimes occur during the dangerous crossings to Italy.
According to figures from Italy's Ministry of the Interior, more than 35,000 migrants have reached Italy on boats since the beginning of the year - in the same period last year, there were around 8,600.
In response to the increased numbers of migrants, the government in Rome declared a national state of emergency earlier this month, which enables the government to set up new reception centres for refugees and help identify and deport them more quickly.