Migrant Offshore Aid Station

At least eight people are feared to have died after a Tunisian warship collided with a migrant boat heading towards Italy on Monday morning, The Local reported.

A Spanish migrant aid group is deciding whether to continue its Mediterranean rescue mission after it said its boat was targeted by Libya's coastguard, reported BBC.

Proactiva Open Arms, one of three groups still operating off Libya, said its boat was in international waters when it was told to head to port in Libya or come under fire.

The Italian government yesterday (13 August) welcomed Libya’s decision to bar foreign vessels from a stretch of water off its coast,a move that has prompted almost all international charities to halt migrant search and rescue operations in the area.

At least 34 migrants, most of them toddlers, drowned yesterday, as coastguard boats and other vessels tried to save hundreds of others packed into boats off the coast of Libya, rescuers said.

As a departure point for refugees trying to get to Europe, migrants arriving in Libya from sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable due to a lack of money and little in the way of documentation.

British television network Channel 4 has filmed Turkish coastguard attacking a boat carrying refugees and trying to push it back to the Greek territorial waters.

Journalist Alex Thomson posted on Twitter a footage of the exclusive story to be broadcast on Channel 4 showing a Turkish ship attacking a boat full of refugees and immigrants.

The Greek coast guard has confronted a Turkish human smuggler with the dead bodies of three migrant children who were in his capsized boat "as a lesson," while charging the trafficker with 120 years of imprisonment. 

A drowned two-year-old boy became the first known migrant casualty of the year on Jan. 1 after the crowded dinghy he was travelling in slammed into rocks off Greece's Agathonisi island, the coastguard said.

The other 39 passengers, including a woman who had fallen overboard, were rescued after local fishermen raised the alarm.

At least 12 migrants believed to be Syrians drowned as two boats sank after leaving southwest Turkey for the Greek island of Kos, Do?an News Agency reported on Sept. 2.

Nearly 3,500 migrants were rescued June 6 from 15 boats off the coast of Libya, Italy's coastguard said.