International charity vessels and Libya's coast guard collected several hundred migrants on Saturday as smugglers tried to take advantage of the calm seas to launch large numbers of boats to Italy.
Libyan coast guard ships intercepted three migrant vessels, the first a dinghy that had been filled with 125 people aboard Zawiya, just west of the capital, Tripoli, said Ayoub Qassem, a spokesman for the coast guard.
The second boat was rejected by Garabulli, east of Tripoli, with 112 people on board, while a third ship with 98 migrants on board was intercepted by Abu Kamash, near the border with Tunisia.
A boat with over 100 migrants on board reached the Aquarius rescue vessel about 21 miles from the west coast of Tripoli. The ship was preparing to transfer migrants to Italy.
Rescuers aboard the Aquarium said the migrant boat was on the verge of sinking completely when it reached them. More than half of the migrants on it were Nigerians, while the rest came from other sub-Saharan African countries.
“All but one of the five balloons holding the boat were completely deflated and there were still about 120 people inside the boat, which is a very precarious condition,” said one of the rescuers, Max Avis.
One of the Palestinians was thrown into the sea by other migrants after trying to convince them that it would be better to be rescued by the Libyan coast guard rather than drowning, rescuers said.
Libya is the main departure point for migrants attempting to reach Europe by sea. More than 600.000 migrants have crossed the central Mediterranean to Italy in the past four years, while human traffickers have taken advantage of a security vacuum in Libya.
Since last summer the rate of departures has dropped sharply after smugglers in the Libyan city of Sabratha have signed an agreement with the government of Tripoli to stop their activities and were then driven out of the city by rival armed groups.
Libya's EU-backed coast guard has also stepped up interceptions, preventing migrant boats from reaching international ships that would take them to Europe.
Two other groups of migrants were transferred to the Aquarium towards the end of Saturday, including 62 who had been collected by a merchant ship in offshore oil fields and another 106 by another charity vessel.
Meanwhile, the coast guard of Zuwara, a former Libyan smuggling center west of Zawiya, claimed to have foiled a departure overnight and arrested some migrants while others had fled with the smugglers.
The coast guard published photos of sub-Saharan African migrants detained sitting in an inflatable raft on the beach and in the dark.