About 150 passengers, more than half of them migrants, were evacuated from a ferry connecting the Italian island of Lampedusa with Sicily on Saturday morning after a fire broke out in the engine room, guards said. Italian coasts.
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The ferry, which linked Lampedusa to Porto Empedocle in southern Sicily, had 177 people on board – 150 passengers, including 83 migrants, and 27 crew members, the coast guard said.
According to the coast guard, all passengers on the ferry were evacuated by boat to Sicily or Lampedusa.
The ferry, which is out of service but still with its crew on board, needs to be towed to a home port, they added.
Large numbers of migrants are arriving in Lampedusa after the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean, attempting to reach Europe before being evacuated to other reception centers.
After more than a week of calm due to bad weather, migrants arrived again by sea on the Italian island on Friday.
According to a recent UNICEF count, at least 990 people were shipwrecked in the central Mediterranean between June and August, three times more than the previous summer.