Rome: Almost 3000 people have been rescued in a large-scale operation in the central Mediterranean after the discovery of more than 20 boats carrying migrants, a spokesman for the Italian coast guard said late Friday.

At least seven deaths had been reported by NGOs operating in the area, with the bodies arriving in Italy by boat.

Earlier on Friday, SOS Mediterranee, a Franco-German-Italian non-governmental organisation, wrote on Twitter that one of its boats had intercepted 20 migrant vessels. Such boats usually carry roughly 100 passengers each.

An SOS Mediterranee spokeswoman said that rescue operations were difficult and that the Italian coast guard and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) were also on the scene. MSF confirmed this, but did not give more details.

Meanwhile, another MSF boat docked in Catania, Sicily, offloading six bodies. It was the first time the charity arrived in a port with no survivors, it said.

Another group, Malta's MOAS, was to dock in Catania Saturday with 394 survivors, including one badly hurt by gunshots, and the body of a teenage boy shot by human traffickers "who wanted his baseball hat," a MOAS spokeswoman said. .

Earlier, Riccardo Gatti of Spanish group Pro Activa Open Arms spoke of an ongoing rescue of 1000 to 1500 migrants from 11 rubber dinghies, during a news conference in the Italian Senate.

Italy is the main landing point for Mediterranean boat migrants, and more than 180,000 people landed on its shores in 2016. In the year to date, arrivals are up by 30 percent, and deaths at sea have increased from about 850 to more than 1,000, according to data from the Interior Ministry.

DPA