Europe’s only private migrant rescue service has saved 100 asylum seekers every day since setting sail last week, the NGO said yesterday.

The Migrant Offshore Aid Station, which has teamed up with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), said yesterday it had saved 700 people in three rescue operations off the Libyan coast.

MOAS founder Christopher Catrambone, who is out on the rescue mission, said he had noticed a significant increase in the number of migrant vessels requiring assistance.

“The most shocking part of this ongoing tragedy is the sheer number of children, including unaccompanied children, making this dangerous crossing. It’s harrowing to imagine what these children have witnessed since leaving their homes, sometimes all the way from Syria,” he said.

The latest mission by MOAS saved 118 people from Syria, Somalia and sub-Saharan Africa. Eighty men, 13 women and 25 minors, including nine children under five, were pulled off a crowded boat and taken onboard the MOAS vessel the MV Phoenix.

A spokesman for the NGO said the operation was conducted in force five swells and took almost two hours to complete.

He said the operation began when the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome directed MOAS to search for a small wooden boat in distress.

The Phoenix located the migrants using one of its onboard drones and set off to retrieve them in a dinghy.

The spokesman said the migrants had been sent out to sea by smugglers at 3am from the Libyan coast. They were scared but were generally in good shape.

The rescue took place just hours after the Phoenix finished disembarking another 473 people in Pozzallo, Sicily.