Dignity 1 (a Medecins Sans Frontieres’ ship) and Proactiva Open Arms (a Spanish humanitarian organization) have utilized 15 rubber boats and a wooden one to save people on Monday. The MSF have the three transferred for treatment in Italy via Medevac. Rescued people are usually taken to the Italian ports of Sicily and Calabria.
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Some 40 co-ordinated rescue missions took place about 20km (12 miles) off the Libyan town of Sabratha, it added.
According to Frontex, the EU’s border agency, the smuggling networks in Libya include a wide range of participants, ranging from ordinary Libyan citizens to former militiamen and law enforcement officers seeking to profit from the migrants’ plight.
The number of people plucked from sea on Monday was much higher than the average.
More than 3,000 migrants have died trying to make the crossing from Libya to Europe, an increase of more than 50 percent compared to the same period in 2015, according to the International Office of Migration (IOM). Monday’s rate almost tripled that weekly amount.
The vessels are often flimsy and overcrowded while some of the migrants set off in such poor health that even if the crossing is calm they can not survive a day at sea. Most were said to have come from Somalia and Eritrea.
The operation came just weeks after a rescue vessel was boarded by armed men who shot at aid workers off the coast of Libya.
Previous year more than one million migrants – many fleeing the civil war in Syria – arrived in Europe, sparking a crisis as countries struggled to cope with the influx, and creating division in the European Union over how best to deal with resettling people.
Italian naval ships and vessels from non-government groups rescued thousands of migrants off the Libyan coast on Monday, the latest surge in desperate attempts to flee to Europe driven by war, poverty, and human traffickers. Vessels tend to be more crowded, often carrying 600 or more passengers, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.
Nearly 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 worldwide waters.
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But as migrant boats and rafts cross the Mediterranean Sea, gateways into Europe are narrowing and many are growing wary.
