Improved weather is said to have triggered this week's mass outflow that has seen more than 10,000 migrants rescued since Sunday from floundering boats.
The migrants are 'racing against the clock because they fear the start of autumn when conditions will not be so good' out at sea, according to Abdel Hamid al-Souei from Libya's Red Crescent.
Most of the migrants from the Horn of Africa and the west of the continent set out from the Libyan town of Sabratha, just 180 miles across the Mediterranean from the Italian island of Lampedusa.
People traffickers have exploited Libya's rampant insecurity to cash in, as authorities concentrate their limited resources on combating jihadists and an uphill political battle to extend their writ over the entire country.'Our patrols have been reduced lately because the vessels are ageing and we don't have the means to control the Sabratha coast,' Libya's navy chief, Colonel Ayoub Qassem, said in Tripoli.
People traffickers have exploited Libya's rampant insecurity to cash in, as authorities concentrate their limited resources on combating jihadists and an uphill political battle to extend their writ over the entire country.'Our patrols have been reduced lately because the vessels are ageing and we don't have the means to control the Sabratha coast,' Libya's navy chief, Colonel Ayoub Qassem, said in Tripoli.
Rescuers saved 3,000 migrants in the waters off Libya on Tuesday as they tried desperately to reach Europe, a day after a record 6,500 people were rescued in the Mediterranean.
And after several weeks of relative calm in the waters between Italy and Libya, more than 1,100 people were rescued on Sunday.
Dramatic images of one rescue this week distributed by the Italian coastguard showed children among the survivors crammed onto an old fishing boat.
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