
Ten bodies have been found in a dinghy off the Libyan coast - prompting the launch of a huge rescue effort to save more than 2,000 stricken migrants.

Some 15 rescue operations took place today in a bid to save the 2,100 migrants stranded on boats off the coast.

This comes after a mass operation by the Italian coastguard yesterday, when 1,200 people, including babies and children, were rescued.

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Young children and babies were among those rescued by a rescue ship and the Italian coastguard off the Libyan coast

Migrants waited on a rubber boat and received life jackets during a rescue operation by the crew of the Topaz Responder, a rescue ship run by Maltese NGO 'Moas' and the Italian Red Cross

A woman wrapped in a survival foil blanket held her son close as they rested aboard the Topaz Responder, having been rescued

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued on Friday and Saturday.

Migrants shrouded in foil survival blankets crowded onto the deck of the vessel following the operation in which at least one baby was saved during the early hours of Saturday.

The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel today.

Doctors were on hand aboard the rescue ship to help brave youngsters who had made the perilous journey

A member of the Maltese NGO MOAS lifts a toddler aboard a small rescue boat in the operation which saw scores of people saved from the sea

Doctors were among the crew members battling to help those stricken out at sea, providing care once aboard the rescue ship

Some of a group of 30 migrants smile upon their arrival at the Port of Tarifa, Spain, after being rescued at sea on Saturday

The tally of migrant deaths at sea since the start of the year stands at around 4,220, higher than the full-year totals for 2014, 2015 or any other year on record, according to the International Organisation for Migration

More than 2,000 people were rescued on Saturday and more than 1,000 people in a similar operation on Friday

The ship was teaming with migrants and rescue workers as teams battled to save those at sea

Meanwhile Pope Francis has denounced the 'scandalous' amounts of money that governments and world institutions have found to save ailing banks but not suffering people, including migrants who are dying as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

The pope today described such policies as a 'bankruptcy of humanity.'

The pope spoke during a meeting at the Vatican with an international group that included environmentalists, labor union activists and indigenous rights activists.

In the audience was the former president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, a defender of the poor.

Pope Francis said: 'What happens in the world of today is that when a bank is bankrupt, scandalous sums immediately appear to save it,' adding much smaller amounts of money cannot be found, 'to save the brothers that suffer so much.'

As the crisis continued, The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel today

158 migrants on a rubber dinghy received life jackets from emergency crews after they were found in the middle of the night

On Friday, groups of migrants wrapped up in foil blankets as the mass rescue operation got underway

A young boy was among the group of 158 rescued on one boat off the coast of Libya on Saturday morning

Over the past three years, more than 470,000 migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, have reached Italy by boat

A series of deadly attacks carried out by militants across Europe over the past year have fuelled a debate about how to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and other migrants propelled by civil war in Syria, Iraq and Libya