ROME >> More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said Wednesday.

There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, in the toe of the Italian peninsula, a coast guard statement said. They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early Tuesday.

The statement said the rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast. One coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat, and then later brought on around 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said. A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard.

— The Associated Press