The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced today that its office in Rome received a call for help from international waters in the Mediterranean Sea that three ships were in distress.
The IOM stated that the man who called said that there were 300 people on his ship, that there were about 20 dead and that the ship was sinking.
He did not provide information about the other ships.
IOM does not have additional details, including information about the location from which the call for help came, according to the AP agency.
Also today, three people died, including a child, when a boat carrying migrants ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea.
According to the Greek Coast Guard, there were at least 83 people on the wooden ship, but their exact number is not known.
A boat carrying what are believed to be around 700 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan coast, overnight, and hundreds are feared dead. According to the information known so far, 24 bodies were recovered, and 28 people from that ship were rescued.
Due to the frequent tragedies with migrants trying to reach the EU via the Mediterranean, an urgent joint meeting of EU foreign and interior ministers was called today, and migrants and the situation in Libya are also the main topic of today's meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg.
Bonus video:
