MILAN: The Italian coast guard is carrying out operations to rescue two boats carrying a total of 1,200 people, it said on Monday, after a surge in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa over the weekend.
One of the boats, which is carrying 400 people and is in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria, southern Italy, had previously been sighted in Maltese waters.
Earlier on Monday, German NGO Sea-Watch International, which had located the fishing boat with one of its planes, said one merchant ship in the area had supplied fuel and water to the boat in distress, but Maltese authorities had ordered it not to conduct a rescue.
Early on Sunday, support service Alarm Phone had said the vessel, which departed from Tobruk in Libya, was adrift and taking on water.
The Maltese authorities did not respond to several requests for comment.
The other rescue operation by Italian coast guard on Monday was to help a fishing boat carrying 800 people that was located over 120 miles southeast of Siracusa, in Sicily.
It said in a statement this operation was complicated by the number of people on board.
A spokesperson for coast guard said it would take hours to complete the two ongoing operations because of difficult conditions, including the long distance form the coast.
Before these two operations, the Italian coast guard had already rescued around 2,000 migrants since Friday, it said.
Italy’s coast guard works to rescue 1,200 migrants drifting at sea
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Italy’s coast guard works to rescue 1,200 migrants drifting at sea
- One of the boats is carrying 400 people and is in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria, southern Italy
- Other rescue operation by Italian coast guard on Monday was to help a fishing boat carrying 800 people that was located over 120 miles southeast of Siracusa, in Sicily
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
