Calls for help went out via satellite phone earlier in the day from the smugglers boats, which included six rubber dinghies and nine fishing boats, all some 72 kilometres off the Libyan shoreline, according to a coast guard statement.

Pitching in to save the migrants were the Italian coast guard, navy and border police boats and aircraft, a tug boat, two German military ships, the Hessen and the Berlin, and an Irish naval ship LE Eithne.

The rescued migrants were brought to Lampedusa port on Saturday evening.