A two-year-old migrant boy who needed medical assistance was flown to Malta last night along with his 23-year-old father and four-year-old brother, the AFM said.

They were flown over by helicopter following a request by Italian rescuers.

Hundreds of migrants have been rescued from small boats off Libya in the past few days, mostly by the Italian coastguard but also by ships operated by humanitarian organisations.

Nearly 600 migrants have died so far this year trying to reach Italy from North Africa, the International Migration Organization (IOM) estimates. Some 4,600 people are thought to have died last year.

In all, 181,000 migrants reached Italy in 2016, about half of the total who arrived in the European Union by sea.

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