Migrant mother is forced to deliver her baby girl on an Italian patrol boat after being rescued off the coast of Sicily

A migrant mother has given birth to a baby girl aboard an Italian patrol boat after being rescued from a crammed dinghy in the Mediterranean sea.

Little Joy Aurora was born at 5.18 am on July 30 on the Italian Navy ship Bettica. 

She is the daughter of a Congolese couple rescued together with 870 other asylum seeking migrants. during childbirth, the mother and baby received health care provide by the medical staff on board the ship.

An Italian Red Cross doctor and nurse and the medical staff of the Italian Navy were all on hand to help out.

It is the third birth aboard Bettica, after Francois Manuel was born June 27, and Manuela, born on July 5. 

Members of the ship crew took turns holding and hugging Joy Aurora. 

After the mother rested in a bed with her newborn child, the couple and their baby were transported in a small boat to Augusta, in Sicily, where they will be taken care of in a transit shelter residence. 

Italy's coast guard and navy rescued upwards of 4,000 migrants on one day last week. Some 3,400 travellers aboard 28 rafts and six boats were rescued in operations coordinated by the coast guard.

On Monday, hundreds of refugees from Somalia, Libya, Bangladesh, Egypt, Congo and West Africa arrived at the southern Italian port of Salerno on board a rescue ship. 

Meanwhile the bodies of 120 migrants have washed up on the shores of Libya in the past 10 days, not from previously known shipwrecks. 

Source:dailymail