About 600 migrants were rescued yesterday evening from a listing fishing boat just outside Libya’s territorial waters in what the Migrant Offshore Aid Station called its “most dangerous and complex rescue to date”.

A spokesman for MOAS, a private rescue operation, said a wooden fishing boat packed with some 600 people looked close to capsizing when the ship Bourbon Argos of Médecins Sans Frontiers, an Italian Navy ship and MOAS’s vessel Phoenix intervened.

“It was quite a frenetic rescue as things had to happen very quickly,” the spokesman said, describing how the Phoenix had deployed a long ‘sausage’ floatation device to give people something to hang onto.

He said there were many women, children and babies on board, and many nationalities including Pakistanis, Syrians and Bangladeshis, as well as Libyans and migrants from several other African countries.

Many women and children were aboard a fishing boat whose occupants, about 600 migrants, were all brought to safety yesterday afternoon.

The rescued migrants were later transferred to another vessel. No lives were lost.

Meanwhile, the port of Palermo yesterday evening received some of the victims of the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean, as the Irish navy vessel Le Niamh brought in 25 dead.

Another 373 sub-Saharan Africans also disembarked, after being saved from a capsized fishing boat some 22 nautical miles off the Libyan coast on Wednesday. About 150 are thought to have lost their lives in all.

Following a distress call picked up in Sicily, the rescue operation was launched with assets of the Italian Coast Guard, the EU’s Frontex mission, and the boats of MSF and MOAS.

It was estimated that, as in today’s rescue, about 600 migrants were on board a fishing boat in distress when it capsized. The migrants apparently moved to one side as rescue boats were approaching.

“Those that were on deck would have managed to jump, some of them drowned and some were saved,” Brig Martin Xeureb from MOAS said yesterday.

“I think it’s unlikely that any additional survivors will be picked up.”

In all, seven ships as well as helicopters were involved in the search operation.

Expressing its sadness over the latest tragedy, the European Commission yesterday again called for more solidarity and help for EU frontier countries.

“Migration is not a popular or petty topic,” the Commission said. “It is easy to cry in front of your TV set when witnessing these tragedies. It is harder to stand up and take responsibility.

“What we need now is the collective courage to follow through with concrete action on words that will otherwise ring empty.”

The EU has recently tripled its resources dedicated to search and rescue in the Mediterranean, allowing the rescue of over 50,000 people since the beginning of June.

However, the Commission yesterday said that this was not enough and that more efforts were needed.

The UNHCR said that the boat involved in Wednesday’s incident had been packed with people “in every nook and cranny”.

Amnesty International urged European governments to do more to provide safe and legal ways for people in need of protectionto enter the EU rather than risking their lives at sea.