Italy's coastguard rescued nearly 900 mostly Syrian migrants from two boats off western Sicily on Thursday, a coastguard spokesman said, amid signs that refugees from the Middle East are increasingly shunning the Greek route into Europe. More than one million migrants, many from Syria, have entered Europe via Turkey and Greece in the past year but the number has fallen sharply since March when Ankara agreed with the European Union to take back refugees landing on the Greek islands. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said the two boats involved in Thursday's operations, which were also carrying some Iraqis, represented the largest such attempted mass migration from Syria and Iraq to Italy for at least a year.
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