Italian rescue mission saves thousands off Libya's coast

Thousands of refugees were rescued off the Libyan coast on Monday, in one of the busiest days for the Italian coastguard in recent years.

Dramatic images showed migrants wearing life jackets jumping off one of their boats into the Mediterranean and swimming toward rescuers.

"The command centre coordinated 40 rescue operations [and] saved 6,500 migrants," the coastguard wrote on Twitter. 

The rescue team included vessels from Italy, humanitarian organisations as well as the EU's border agency Frontex.

On Sunday more than 1,100 migrants were rescued in the same area, though August has been slightly less busy than years past.

The total number of arrivals in Italy this year, prior to Monday's rescues, was at around 105,000, according to the UN refugee agency.

More than 3,000 migrants have died at sea while trying to reach either Greece or Italy since the start of this year, an increase of some 50 percent on the same period in 2015.