Libya Herald
As the EU beefs up its Operation Triton mission, France carried out its first maritime rescue this morning when a patrol vessel picked up 217 migrants in three inflatables off the Libyan coast and arrested two suspected people smugglers.
The French were responding to an alert from Triton’s Rome-based maritime rescue co-ordination centre. Some of the migrants needed medical care. The French captain of the D’Estienne D’Orves-class naval vessel F796 was reported by Reuters as saying that the smugglers’ three boats had been “neutralised”. The news agency also said that those rescued had been handed over to the Italian authorities. Under the EU’s Dublin Treaty, illegal immigrants become the responsibility of the first country with which they come into contact.