Photo: Marina Militare

The two stories were drastically different and yet fundamentally the same. Off Florida on Thursday, roughly 75 miles northeast of West Palm Beach,  Zeeland, a Royal Netherlands Navy patrol craft bound for Key West, spotted and rescued seven on an overturned 24′ open console style power boat. Three others were reported to have died and two are missing. Those rescued were described as migrants. Where they departed from has not yet been reported. The U.S. Coast Guard has deployed a fast response cutter and a helicopter to help in the search off the southern Florida coast.

Also on Thursday, the Italian Navy rescued 1,100 migrants attempting to reach the country by crossing the Mediterranean Sea on small boats. As reported by Reuters, “Patrol helicopters identified the overcrowded rafts on Wednesday and four navy vessels participated in the rescue which ended early on Thursday, a statement said. The navy gave no details about the nationalities of the migrants.

Italy is a major gateway into Europe for migrants, and sea arrivals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, fuelled by Syria’s civil war and strife in the Horn of Africa.  In October, 366 Eritreans drowned in a shipwreck near the shore of the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. More than 200, mostly Syrians, died in another shipwreck a week later.“