USCGC Courageous

Romania's coast guard has rescued more than 150 migrants from Iraq and Iran from a ship in distress on the Black Sea, on what is becoming a new route for migrants trying to reach Western Europe.

The rusty ship was towed to the Black Sea port of Constanta, some 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of Bucharest, before dawn Wednesday.

Greece's coast guard has launched a search and rescue operation for a boat carrying an unknown number of migrants in the Aegean following an emergency call from a passenger.

Three patrol boats, a helicopter and one nearby ship were participating in Wednesday's search in the sea area between the islands of Mykonos and Icaria.

The crew of a Maltese-flagged cargo ship on Tuesday came to the rescue of 113 migrants whose smuggling boat had foundered in the Ionian Sea close to the island of Paxos.

The crew of the cargo vessel helped the migrants after their boat ran into trouble some 32 nautical miles west of Paxos.

A drifting wooden vessel with 49 migrants on board was towed to safety on Tuesday by the Hellenic Coast Guard after being located by port authorities north of the Aegean island of Samos.

Authorities had launched a search and rescue operation following a call to emergency services earlier Tuesday.

There were no more details about the operation.

The Turkish Coast Guard has captured 350 migrants, a majority of them Syrian nationals, as part of a raid operation on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea heading to Italy. 

The Coast Guard captured 71 migrants on board the ship at the Bozyaz? port in the southern province of Mersin, while also capturing 271 migrants at the port waiting to board the ship. 

Turkish coast guard units have captured 333 migrants, mostly Syrian refugees, in a boat as they were attempting to sail to Europe.

The coast guard's Mediterranean region command staged the operation late on Jan. 18, capturing 333 migrants on a boat off the southern province of Mersin.

A total of 345 migrants, mainly women and children, had been plucked from a boat in trouble off the coast of Cyprus by a cruise ship

Greek coast guard officers on Monday spotted and detained two groups of irregular migrants.

Coast guard officials rescued 41 would-be migrants off the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos on Tuesday.

The migrants were crammed into a vessel that was half-full of water, according to coast guard sources who gave no details about the migrants’ ethnic origins.