Italy has rescued more than 500 migrants in the Strait of Sicily as part of several coastguard operations.
In the first, a Maltese vessel rescued more than 200 people on two rubber dinghies who had put out an SOS call while still in Libyan waters in the early hours of Friday.
A boat flying a Bahamas flag also rescued 118 people, while in another operation a Navy vessel called on a tugboat to rescue 175 people from two more boats.
Meanwhile, Italian divers have found another body from the refugee shipwreck last week off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, raising the death toll in the tragedy to 312.
Only 155 survivors were rescued out of an estimated 500 people, most of them Eritreans and Somalis, on the boat which departed from Libya.
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