'Miracle' baby born on rescue ship as migrant arrivals surge in Italy

A baby boy named Miraclehas been born on board a humanitarian ship a bright spot asthe tide of migrants risking sea crossings from Libya to Italyhas increased as the weather has improved.

There have been more than 1,800 migrants rescued byhumanitarian ships, and Italy's navy and coast guard vessels overthe past three days, and one body was recovered, an Italiancoast guard official said.

Arrivals from Libya, a staging post for people smugglers,have plummeted 85 per cent this year from last as Italy providedsupport to the Libyan coast guard and to municipalities along thecoast to stop migrant boats.

But good weather or other factors seem to have reversed thattrend, for now.

"It's really hard to know what's happening inside Libya, orwhy the Libyan coast guard has not been so active in these lastfew days," said Lauren King, a spokeswoman from the Aquarius,the ship baby Miracle was born aboard.

The Aquarius is a rescue ship run by SOS Mediterranee andDoctors without Borders (MSF), which brought ashore 70 migrantsin Catania, Sicily, on Sunday. The Aquarius is setting off againlater in the day for the waters off the coast of Libya.

"Given the weather conditions ... It's better we're outthere and ready," she said.

Threat of mass deportation

On Saturday, the leader of the far-right League party, whichappears poised to form a coalition government with the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, said that the surge inarrivals meant someone was trying to undermine the would-beadministration.

"The usual powers that be are threatening us with themigrant boats," Matteo Salvinitweeted.

The League has promised to take a hard line on irregularimmigration and deport hundreds of thousands of migrants if thegovernment receives the president's endorsement and winsparliament's backing.

Migrants rescued by the Aquarius spoke of horrificconditions and violence in Libya, including the mother of the baby born on Saturday.

"Both the mother and baby are doing very well," AmoinSoulemane, the midwife on the Aquarius, said in a statement.

Miracle, weighing 2.8 kilograms, was the sixth baby born on the rescueship, but the first this year, King said.

When Miracle was brought onto deck by the midwife, themigrants on board celebrated his birth by singing and dancing a far cry from the conditions they said they had come from inLibya.

The mother, whose name was not given, told MSF she had been"held captive, beaten, given very little food and extorted formoney for release" during the year she was in Libya.

She was eventually able to escape from her captors, and onThursday she set out to sea on a rubber boat with 68 others.