The Latest: Aid group recovers 25 bodies in Mediterranean
Doctors Without Borders says its personnel have recovered the bodies of 25 migrants aboard an overcrowded inflatable raft in the Mediterranean Sea.
Field coordinator Michele Telaro said in a statement that victims likely died of fuel inhalation, and that the potent mixture of petrol and water hampered the recovery efforts during the operation Tuesday.
The U.N. refugee agency says the death toll for migrants in the Mediterranean has reached at least 3,800 this year so far.
The Geneva-based agency said Wednesday on Twitter than this makes 2016 the deadliest year ever for migrants in the Mediterranean.
The global body had warned on Tuesday that this year's death toll was likely to exceed the 3,771 deaths reported for the whole of 2015.
Migrants fleeing war and poverty take dangerous trips from Libya to Italy on overcrowded boats, hoping to make their way from there to new lives in Europe.
A Danish mayor says an asylum center in central Denmark for males under the age of 18 will be shut down because two female employees are suspected of "having committed sexual abuses on some of the boys."
Authorities moved fast after migrants set fire to shelters and tents in the camp in northern France before being forced to leave.
Pope Francis' appeal on Wednesday came the day after residents of an Adriatic coastal town formed a blockade to prevent the arrival of 12 female migrants, one of them pregnant, who were to be housed in a hostel.
After two full days of a weeklong operation, French authorities have already transported thousands of migrants to reception centers around France.