Nearly 1,500 boat migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean over the past 24 hours, Italian authorities conducting maritime search and rescue operations said Thursday. According to dpa, the Italian navy, the Marina Militare, said it picked up 764 people overnight, 227 in the morning, including 13 women and 7 children, and about 200 more in the afternoon. The coast guard said separately that it came to the rescue of 251 boat migrants late on Wednesday, and that it was bringing them onshore to Pozzallo, a small coast town on Sicily's south-eastern tip.
