Italy rescues two ships carrying hundreds of migrants

A ship carrying hundreds of migrants has been abandoned by its crew in rough seas in the Mediterranean Sea off Italy's south coast, in the second such incident in three days, the Italian coast guard said on Friday.

Guardsmen managed to take control of the vessel, the Ezadeen, after landing on it by helicopter, a statement said. Facing difficult weather conditions, they are trying to take the vessel to an Italian port.

Italy has had to deal with a massive surge in migrants in recent years — many of them from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa — hoping to reach Europe by boat. The cargo ships usually carry mostly Syrian refugees, according to a representative for the United Nations refugee agency, but also include people from other countries, including some fleeing fighting in Iraq.

The U.N. refugee agency says 160,000 seaborne migrants arrived in Italy from January to November 2014, and a further 40,000 in Greece. Thousands have died attempting the journey.

The Ezadeen had been drifting powerless after running out of fuel about 40 miles from Italy's southern coast with as many as 450 people onboard. The ship was built almost 50 years ago to carry livestock, a website tracking maritime movements said.

"We know that it left from a Turkish port and was abandoned by its crew," coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini told SkyTG24 television. "When we hailed the ship to ask about its status, a migrant woman responded, saying, 'We are alone, and we have no one to help us.'" It had been put on a collision course for the Italian coast before running out of fuel, Marini said.

The nationality of the migrants was not yet known, a coastguard spokesman said, but there are women and children on board. It is the third such migrant ship to reach Italy in the past two weeks, as smugglers turn to abandoning old ships in a shift in tactics.

On Wednesday, about 800 migrants, mostly Syrian refugees, arrived in Italy after they were apparently abandoned by their ship's crew and set on a course for the Italian coast. Those on board included 60 children and two pregnant women, one of whom gave birth on the vessel, according to the Italian Red Cross. The coastguard also boarded that vessel and took over navigation.

Two weeks ago, the Italian navy went to the aid of an abandoned cargo ship carrying 850 migrants, disembarking them at a port in Sicily.

Civil war in Syria and widespread violence in Libya has swelled the number of people crossing the Mediterranean last year. Many of them paid smugglers $1,000 to $2,000 per person to make the journey.

Smugglers have changed tactics, switching to larger cargo ships, in part because Italy has ended its Mare Nostrum maritime search and rescue mission, an aggressive year-long effort to prevent migrant deaths in the Mediterannean. The end of the program, which ran from October 2013 to 2014, makes crossing in a small boat more risky. Italy discontinued Mare Nostrum partly due to public concern over the cost—$137 million in its first year. Human rights groups warned that closing the mission would endanger more lives.

Increased fighting in Libya has also caused a surge in migrants, Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, told Reuters. "We have seen increasing use of old cargo ships ready to be dismantled [to smuggle migrants] over the past two months," she said. "The usually don't even have any electronic equipment on board."

Smugglers set the ships on an autopilot course in international waters and jump onto a smaller vessel to escape, she said.

Al Jazeera and wire services