European Union leaders pledged to act Friday to stop even more boat people drowning in the Mediterranean as Italy reported 700 people plucked to safety off Sicily overnight.

The rescues come three weeks after 400 refugees fleeing conflict in Africa and Syria perished in dramas that shocked the continent.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Friday he would call in the U.S. ambassador to Madrid to explain reports of American spying on the country, a close ally of Washington.

"We do not have evidence that Spain has been spied on ... but we are calling in the ambassador to get information," Rajoy said after an EU summit dominated by the growing scandal over U.S. intelligence activities in supposedly friendly countries.

Rwandan troops are ready to stage a precision strike inside Democratic Republic of Congo if there is a new cross-border shelling, the country's U.N. envoy said Friday.

Rwanda has accused DR Congo troops of firing three shells into its territory during a new surge in fighting with rebels near the border.

Europe's leaders sought how to deal with the drama of Mediterranean boat-people Friday, weeks after the deaths by drowning of 400 refugees fleeing conflict shocked many across the continent.

"Europe can neither save nor welcome the whole world," the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, told a European Union summit.

The alleged U.S. spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone may have been run out of its Berlin embassy, less than a kilometer (mile) from the chancellery, media reported Friday.

The surveillance was allegedly conducted by a listening post of the Special Collection Service, run jointly by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency, said the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Nearly 700 refugees including dozens of Eritreans have been rescued off Sicily in five operations, as leaders grapple with the issue of illegal immigration at a European Union summit.

Patrol boats, navy vessels and a Maltese-flagged cargo vessel rescued asylum-seekers from five boats over the past 24 hours, the coastguard said in a statement on Friday.

Firefighters in Australia took advantage of lighter winds Friday to get on top of a nine-day bushfire emergency as officials said the military could be liable for compensation after starting one of the worst blazes.

Thousands of largely volunteer firefighters have been battling infernos that have destroyed more than 200 homes, cost two lives, and razed more than 124,000 hectares (306,000 acres) across New South Wales state since last week.

Police in Athens on Friday said they had arrested a Greek couple suspected of having purchased a Roma baby for 4,000 euros ($5,500).

The couple, a 53-year-old man and his 48-year-old wife, told police that they had received the baby girl, only a few weeks old, from a Roma woman in March.

South Korea on Friday carried out a military exercise aimed at repelling any attempted landing on a tiny set of islets also claimed by Japan.

The four-hour exercise involving five warships, jet fighters and helicopters, demonstrated "the military's will to defend" the Dokdo islets, a defense ministry spokesman said.

Britain's David Cameron will become the first foreign leader to visit Sri Lanka's war-torn Tamil heartland during next month's Commonwealth summit when he will press Colombo on human rights.

The British premier is under pressure at home and abroad to boycott the summit over the bloody end to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict but he vowed in a meeting with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to have some "very tough conversations" with President Mahinda Rajapakse's government.