A humanitarian organisation that has saved the lives of 40,000 migrants in the Mediterranean has suspended its operations, citing security concerns and “increasing instability” off the coast of Libya.

The Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station, which was founded by a pair of philanthropists, said it wanted nothing to do with Libya’s interception of migrant boats leaving its coast.

It will instead redeploy its flagship, the Phoenix, to South-east Asia to help Rohingya refugees who are fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

The Libyan coast guard, trained and financed by the EU, has in recent weeks been blocking migrant boats and pushing them back to the coast.

Human rights groups say migrants, most of them sub-Saharan Africans, face appalling conditions in holding camps and detention centres in Libya, including torture, rape, violent assault and modern-day slavery.