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dpa
Rome
Some 2,100 migrants were plucked from the central Mediterranean on Friday, the Italian Coastguard said in a statement, raising to more than 12,000 the total rescue tally of the past 48 hours.
There were nine separate interventions, which intercepted migrants on six wooden ships and three dinghies. The Italian navy, the EU border agency Frontex, the EU naval mission Eunavfor Med and the Doctors without Borders and Moas charities were involved in the rescues.
On Thursday, the Italian Coastguard coordinated 43 rescue missions, saving about 5,000 migrants, and recovering the body of a woman. It was a high number of arrivals recorded after eight days of bad weather, which temporarily halted departures from Libya.
Data from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), showed 222,318 migrants had arrived to Europe this year, including 159,556 in Greece and 55,563 in Italy, while 2,861 had died or gone missing in Mediterranean sea crossings.
The Topaz Responder, a ship run by the Malta-based humanitarian group Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), said earlier in the day that around two dozen migrant boats had been spotted in the sea about 20 nautical miles from the Libyan port city of Sabratha.
Libya's navy intercepted about 1,000 migrants on board eight rubber boats off Sabratha on Thursday morning, spokesman Ayoub Qassem said. He said the migrants were from Arab as well as sub-Saharan African countries.
