EU leaders to restore rescue operations after migrant boat disaster

Human rights groups warned at the time that the EU decision would increase deaths. They now say action must be taken to reverse it.

"The stakes are very high on Thursday. EU heads of state have the responsibility of the region's human rights credibility on their shoulders and they need to take firm action to save lives," Iverna McGowan, head of rights group Amnesty International's Brussels office, told a news conference.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, which has borne the brunt of caring for the migrants, wants other EU countries to do more to fund efforts to rescue and settle those who make it across.

TARGETING TRAFFICKERS

Many EU countries still believe search and rescue operations alone will not solve the problem, and more must be done to fight traffickers, who have taken advantage of lawlessness in Libya to set up operations that spirited 170,000 migrants across the sea last year.

One proposal the leaders will discuss is a military and civilian mission to capture and destroy the traffickers' boats.

"We know where the boats are, where the smugglers gather together the people who are fleeing," Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told Italy's SkyTG24 television.

EU officials have drawn comparisons with operations to crack down on Somali pirates.

"We are determined to destroy their business model," one senior EU official said, saying states would make "surgical", intelligence-based operations once legal issues, including a possible U.N. mandate, had been addressed.

"We are not talking about war," he stressed. "No one is talking about boots on the ground."

The leaders will also discuss a pilot project to resettle 5,000 to 10,000 refugees from Mediterranean countries to other EU states, the senior diplomat said. The United Nations estimates 36,000 have made the voyage so far this year.

On Wednesday, Italy's coast guard said it had rescued 220 migrants on Wednesday taken from two large rubber boats about 40 miles from the Libyan coast.

Another 545, most of them without even a pair of shoes, were taken to Salerno, just south of Naples. A further 446, mostly of Egyptian, Syrian, Sudanese, Somali and Eritrean origin, arrived in eastern Sicily after being rescued from a fishing boat.