Paris to Open Refugee Camp for Migrants

At least 1,000 migrants died over the past week in the Mediterranean

The mayor of Paris on Tuesday announced plans to set up a refugee camp in the city's north, saying her country can no longer stand by as the Mediterranean "becomes a graveyard" for migrants, NBC News reported.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo detailed her plans as officials decried a deadly week in the Mediterranean in which an estimated 1,000 or more migrants perished making the journey from Africa to Europe.

The International Organization for Migration said it had seen a "hopeful trend" for the first three weeks of May but that it had "obviously changed" its assessment following a series of shipwrecks and capsizes this week.

The worst incident involved the capsize of a vessel off the coast of Italy in which 550 migrants were thought to have drowned.

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