This image grab made from a handout video released by the Italian Coast Guard (Guardia Costiera) yesterday, shows an Italian coast guard taking part in a rescue operation of a boat carrying 397 migrants, on Saturday in the Mediterranean Sea. Italian coastguards said 3,690 migrants were rescued on Saturday alone, one of the highest numbers ever recorded in a single day, raising fears that the tide of desperate people trying to reach Europe has not been slowed by recent disasters.

Reuters/AFP
Rome
Nearly 4,500 migrants were plucked from boats off the coast of Libya over the weekend and 10 bodies were recovered, Italy’s coast guard and navy said, in what looked to be the biggest rescue mission of its kind so far this year.
Two weeks after nearly 900 boat people drowned in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory, the flow of people from Africa desperate to reach a better life in Europe has accelerated, as people smugglers take advantage of calmer seas.
Seven bodies were found on two large rubber boats packed with migrants and rescuers plucked from the sea the corpses of three others who had jumped into the water when they saw a merchant ship approaching, the coast guard said.
Separately, authorities in Egypt said that three died when a migrant boat attempting to reach Greece sank off its coast. Thirty-one people were rescued.
Some 10 Italian vessels, four private boats and a French ship acting on behalf of the European border control agency took part in the rescue off Libya, co-ordinated by Italy, the country that receives the biggest number of Mediterranean migrants.
The private Migrant Offshore Aid Station, which runs one rescue ship in partnership with Doctors Without Borders (MSF, Medicins Sans Frontieres), said on Twitter that it had saved 369 migrants, mainly from Eritrea, from a single overcrowded wooden boat.
Italian coastguards said 3,690 migrants were rescued on Saturday.
A record 3,791 migrants were rescued on April 12 followed and further 2,850 the following day.
The navy said its patrol ship Bettica picked up more than 400 migrants travelling on board two vessels yesterday, among them some 60 women and around 15 children.
Video released by the coastguard showed migrants crammed onto a small boat that was intercepted on Saturday. The migrants are later seen clambering aboard a rescue vessel.
Coastguards are seen wearing protective white suits and face masks.
The Italian frigate Bersagliere took 778 migrants on board while the patrol boat Vega plucked another 675 from the water.
French patrol boat Commandant Birot, which was sent last week to boost the EU’s Operation Triton patrols dealing  with the influx of migrant boats, also picked up 219 people off the coast of Libya on Saturday.
Two suspected people traffickers were to be handed over to police after the patrol boat docked in the port of Crotone in Calabria in southern Italy.
All of those rescued were being brought to Italian shores, some already arriving at Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island, and others at Trapani, Sicily.
More were to be brought ashore overnight and today.
Shocked by last month’s record disaster, European Union leaders agreed to triple funding for the EU sea patrol mission Triton, but there is still disagreement on what to do with the people fleeing conflict and poverty in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said in a newspaper interview yesterday that the EU should set up a quota system whereby member countries agree to take in more refugees in order to relieve some of the pressure on Italy, Greece and Malta.
But Austria’s proposal is likely to face tough opposition from some member states, including Britain and Hungary.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that EU states should be allowed to set their own rules on migrants, and that Hungary did not want any of them.
Growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya is giving free hand to people smugglers who make an average of €80,000 ($90,000) from each boatload, according to an ongoing investigation by an Italian court.
Mild spring weather and calm summer seas are expected to push total arrivals in Italy for 2015 to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 on last year, according to an interior ministry projection.
Almost 2,000 are estimated to have perished during the crossing already this year
EU leaders are now seeking UN Security Council approval for military action against smugglers in chaos-ridden Libya.
But rights groups have blasted the EU for focusing on patrols rather than humanitarian efforts.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has also urged Europe to refrain from resorting to force.
“What is crucial is to have a global approach that takes into account the roots of the problem, the security and human rights of migrants and refugees, such as having immigration channels that are legal and regular,” he said last week.
Several hundred migrants, mostly Africans but also including many fleeing the civil war in Syria, set out from Libya everyday, hoping to make it to Europe.
The number of migrants entering the EU illegally in 2014 almost tripled to 276,000, according to Frontex, nearly 220,000 of them arriving via the Mediterranean.