Around 6,500 migrants were rescued off the coast of Libya yesterday, the Italian coastguard said, in one of its busiest days of life-saving in recent years.
Dramatic images of one operation showed about 700 migrants crammed onto a fishing boat, with some of them jumping off the vessel in life jackets and swimming towards rescuers.
A five-day-old baby was among those rescued along with other infants and was airlifted to an Italian hospital, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which took part in operations.
“The command centre co-ordinated 40 rescue operations” that included vessels from Italy, humanitarian organisations as well as the EU’s border agency Frontex, saving 6,500 migrants, the coastguard wrote on Twitter.
“We’ve been particularly busy today,” a spokesman for the Italian coastguard said.
On Sunday more than 1,100 migrants were rescued in the same area.
The total number of arrivals in Italy this year now stands at 112,500, according to the UN’s refugee agency and the coastguard, slightly below the 116,000 recorded by the same point in 2015.
Almost all of those migrants originate from West Africa and the Horn of Africa, often departing from Libya en masse when the sea is calm and a southern wind can push boats up into international waters.
Such days often come one after another, leading to large numbers of boats over a short period.
More than 13,000 people were rescued in under a week at the end of May, and 8,300 more at the start of August.