VALLETTA, Malta, June 7 (UPI) -- A joint effort between European countries to rescue migrants traveling across the Mediterranean Sea on shoddy boats saved thousands of lives on Saturday and Sunday.
CNN reported the International Organization for Migration as saying on Sunday that good weather has prompted a slew of crossings as migrants attempt to flee war- and poverty-stricken regions of the Middle East and Africa.
Smugglers are known to transport migrants in unsafe vessels that often capsize, resulting in mass drownings as European powers debate how to handle the crisis. According to the BBC, the numbers of such crossings in the first five months of 2015 are up more than 10 percent.
The operation, coordinated by the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station, comprises efforts by Italy, Germany and Ireland. The U.N. refugee agency said Spain was also involved.
Rescue vessels are reported to have saved 3,500 migrants on Saturday: Italian navy ship Driade rescued 560, the Irish vessel LE Eithne saved 399, and two German vessels, the Berlin and the Hessen, saved 1,411 migrants from four vessels.
Meanwhile, the British navy's HMS Bulwark rescued more than 1,000 migrants on Sunday, the UK Defense Ministry told CNN. The vessel saved more than 2,000 migrants since it was deployed to the area May 5.
The Italian and French navies rescued a similar number of migrants in a single weekend during early May. Just days later, however, about 40 migrants died after their boat deflated in the sea.
In early April, the Italian coast guard and navy says it rescued up to 1,500 migrants from the sea over a period of 24 hours, but later in the month about 400 migrants drowned when their ship capsized off the Libyan coast.
As of early May, at least 1,750 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015, compared to 96 who perished during the same time in 2014, the BBC reports.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 218,000 people crossed the Mediterranean using irregular routes in 2014, of whom 3,500 died. Italy alone dealt with about 170,000 such refugees in that time.
"Mare Nostrum" was the name given to Italy's migrant rescue operations, but right-wing politicians in the country expressed concerns about its daily cost and the possibility that Middle Eastern and North African terrorists might make their way into Italy's borders.
Mare Nostrum ended late last year and a smaller European Union operation known as "Operation Triton" took over, but U.N. leaders predicted a higher degree of migrant deaths due to lighter efforts.
In March an EU official warned that up to a million migrants could leave Libya for Europe in 2015.
Saturday and Sunday's operation comes nearly a month after the EU proposed a plan to distribute arriving migrants throughout the continent in order to ease the burden on southern European nations where the majority of them arrive.
