Italy says 6,000 migrants saved, 2 drowned since Thursday

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ROME: The Italian navy on Sunday said it had recovered the bodies of two people in an operation that, along aid agencies, had helped pick up 6,000 people since Thursday.

Navy ships patrolling off Libya intervened to help four rubber dinghies and an overcrowded fishing boat, it said.

In one operation by the vessel Vega, “five migrants were picked up out of the sea, three people were resuscitated and two were already dead,” it said on its Twitter account.

According to the latest figures from the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — issued on July 28 before the latest migratory wave — 89,217 people, most from sub-Saharan Africa have arrived in Italy by sea since the start of the year.

The tally is comparable to the total of 93,000 recorded for the January-July period last year.