The bodies of five people believed to have been attempting a Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe have been recovered from the sea, the Italian navy said Monday, further raising the number of casualties registered the past few days, dpa reported. Maltese authorities extracted 29 bodies from the hold of another vessel during the weekend, while the International Organization for Migration spoke of more than 100 victims and 300 missing from recent migrant boat trips. In the latest rescue, the victims were picked up overnight from a half-sunken dinghy, along with 61 survivors, who said about 20 more people were missing. A Bermuda-flag merchant ship helped with the operations. The navy said it intervened several other times during the night, rescuing a total of 763 migrants. It said its vessels had a total of 1,771 migrants on board, including those intercepted in previous days, waiting to be disembarked in Italian ports.
