Italian authorities scrambled to rescue hundreds of migrants in rough waters near Italian shores on Friday for the second time in three days. The coastguard said that a rescue team boarded the ship, which is thought to be Syrian, and it was towed to an Italian port.

The ship, sailing under the flag of Sierra Leonne, lost its power overnight off the coast of southeast Italy. The ship was abandoned by its crew and carried 450 migrants.

According to BBC News, a distress call was put in place by a migrant on board. The migrant said that the ship was headed toward the Italian coast, there was no crew and there was “no one to steer.”

Italian coast guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said that pregnant women and children were aboard the ship and most of them were thought to be Syrian. The ship, Ezadeen, reportedly ran out of fuel along with food, water and milk.

It was towed by an Icelandic ship that is part of the European Frontex border control mission. Because the seas were so rough, rescuers could not cross from one vessel to another. As a result, an Italian helicopter was brought in. The Italian Air Force stated that the only way the ship could be boarded was from the air.

Despite earlier reports stating that the ship had set sail from Cyprus, Marini said he believed it had set sail from Turkey. Officials said it had been at sea for nearly six days after it veered off course due to bad weather conditions.

According to the New York Times, the use of large vessels to carry people across the Mediterranean is a new tactic by traffickers. These desperate people are paying thousands of dollars to flee war zones and escape chaotic, repressive regimes, and traffickers are turning a large profit.

William Spindler, spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, stated that he knows of at least four similar incidents that have occurred in the last two months. Earlier in the week, 796 migrants were rescued from a different ship without a crew.

Spindler told BBC Radio that people smugglers have been cramming refugees and migrants into large cargo vessels and sending them “uncrewed in the direction of Italy.” He added that in the past, the same thing was done with smaller vessels like dinghies and fishing boats.

But now, cargo boats are commonly being used. Spindler said the danger of having no one at the tiller is that the ship could crash into the coast and “many lives will be lost.”

Analysts said that this new tactic could have been developed as a result of Italy phasing out a costly search-and-rescue program called Mare Nostrum. This program located and rescued dozens of small boats used by migrants. Its replacement, arranged by Frontex, does not cover as wide of an area as Mare Nostrum had in the past.

The United Nations said that more than 200,000 migrants and refugees arrived in European countries in 2014. And about 160,000 of those refugees were headed to Italy, and almost half of them were from Eritrea and Syria, which are located in the Horn of Africa. There were only 60,000 who did so in 2013.