The Italian navy has rescued more than a thousand mostly African migrants in Mediterranean waters south of Sicily.<br /><br />The start of the year is usually a period for heavy traffic and despite the deaths of hundreds in shipwrecks last year, the immigration crisis shows no sign of letting up. <br /><br />In October, 366 Eritreans drowned near the island of Lampedusa.<br /><br />In one of the latest incidents, more than 200 migrants were picked up by the navy in choppy seas and ferried on to a port near Syracuse on Sicily’s eastern coast.<br /><br />Sea arrivals to Italy from Northern Africa more than tripled in 2013, fuelled by refugees from Syria’s civil war and political strife in the Horn of Africa.
