An Italian warship headed for Libyan waters within minutes of parliament in Rome voting to authorize the operation.

Italy takes the lion’s share of migrants risking their lives to make the Mediterranean crossing from Libya.

People traffickers have been thriving because of the Libyan authorities inability to control them.

It’s raised the political temperature ahead of elections in Italy early next year.

An Italian patrol boat will work from Tripoli. A second Italian naval vessel will follow within days.

Italy had intending sending six ships until the Libyan authorities, who approve the operation, said this was too many.

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The world organization says increasing numbers of of these people desperate to leave Africa are losing their lives in their quest to reach Europe.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says the death rate of people crossing from Libya to Italy is increasing.

More than 2 000 people have died this year making this journey.

UNHCR says the people traffickers are becoming more ruthless.

It says it needs $421 million to stop people attempting the crossing in unseaworthy boats and to crack down on the people traffickers.

It warns that refugees are imprisoned, beaten, robbed and raped by these traffickers.

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There’s  no official confirmation of what would be one of the biggest disasters involving Africans desperately trying to get to Europe.

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From the refugee camp in Kalamata, 41 survivors rescued by a Filipino cargo ship say there were at least 500 people on the ship that sank.

260 Ethiopians, Sudanese, Somalis and Egyptians set out from Tobruk in Libya last week.

At sea, the people traffickers transferred them to a larger ship carrying more than 300 migrants.

The survivors say that ship sank and they were some of the few saved.

Almost a year ago, an estimated 800 refugees drowned when trapped on an overcrowded fishing boat that sank in the Mediterranean.

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Countries where these desperate people are coming from and where they embark on their perilous journey are hitting at the people smugglers carrying them.

Libya’s internationally recognised government’s warned countries not to send ships into its territorial waters without authorisation.

It attacked a Turkish ship guilty of this and killed one seaman.

Many of the traffickers’ ship crossing to the Italian island Lampedusa set out from Libya.

Niger’s lawmakers have adopted a law calling for sentences of up to 30 years for smugglers of migrants.

The European Union is seeking a UN mandate allowing it to destroy the often flimsy boats used to carry these migrants.

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Observers say it marks an appreciation by the grouping that this is a Europe-wide problem that cannot be left only to Italy and Greece.

The plan thrashed out by ministers meeting in Luxembourg is aimed squarely at the people traffickers profiting from the desperate migrants by cramming them into unseaworthy vessels headed for the closest European destination.

It also commits greater resources to preventing the departures and rescuing those in peril on the sea.

Italy yesterday arrested the captain and first mate of a vessel that sank off the Libyan coast at the weekend, leaving at least 700 people dead.

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