• Thousands rescued in Mediterranean

ROME—About 3,000 migrants were picked up Tuesday from the central Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said, raising to around 10,000 the rescue tally over the past 48 hours.

There were 30 interventions carried out by Italian coast guard and navy vessels, the European Union’s anti-migrant smuggling mission Eunavfor Med and the bloc’s border agency Frontex, the Guardia Costiera said.

A day earlier, the coast guard coordinated 35 rescue missions, intercepting 44 dinghies, eight small wooden boats, one ship with 200 aboard and another carrying 704 people, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, told dpa. The total number of rescued was 6,900. “Nearly 7,000 people in a day is really quite a lot. If it’s not a record, then it’s close to it,” said Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesman in Rome.

Di Giacomo said two bodies were recovered, but the cause of death was not yet known. The remains were due to be taken Wednesday to the southern port of Brindisi, along with 720 survivors, the local mayor said, as quoted by the ANSA news agency.

The Italian navy and coast guard, and British, Irish and Norwegian vessels, as well as a ship run by the charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, were involved in Monday’s operations, IOM said.

A woman gave birth immediately after being rescued, the Guardia Costiera wrote on Twitter, while the navy, or Marina Militare, said another woman asked for her 3-month-old girl to be baptized by the Catholic chaplain onboard.

In a separate statement, MSF doctor Antonia Zemp said her organization’s ship, Dignity I, picked up “twins who were premature babies delivered at eight months and were five days old.”

They were moved along with their mother to a boat that could quickly take them onshore to Italy, because “one of the boys was not well. He was vomiting, had hypothermia and was nonreactive,” Zemp said.