The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says a baby was born on one of its ships during a rescue operation.

At 7:00am (ships time) a healthy baby boy was born in international waters on-board the MV Aquarius.

He was born to Nigerian parents, who have called him Newman Otas.

His parents, Otas and Faith, and older brothers Victory (7) and Rollres (5) were rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat 24 hours previously.

MSF says 392 people are on-board its ship after two rubber boats were rescued.

The charity says 155 people now on board are under 18 years of age, while 141 of them are traveling alone without a parent or guardian.

Image: MSF

While there are also 11 children under the age of five and four babies under a year on-board.

The baby's mother Faith says: "I was very stressed on the rubber boat, sitting on the floor of the boat with the other women and children.

"Panicking that I would go into labour. I could feel my baby moving, he would move down and then move back up again. I had been having contractions for three days."

MSF Midwife Jonquil Nicholl delivered the baby: "A very normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions.

"I am filled with horror at the thought of what would have happened if this baby had arrived 24 hours earlier; in that unseaworthy rubber boat, with fuel on the bottom where the women sit, crammed in with no space to move, at the mercy of the sea.

"And 48 hours previously they were waiting on a beach in Libya not knowing what was ahead of them."

Since the beginning of the operations on April 21st, MSF teams on-board the Dignity, Bourbon Argos and Aquarius (in partnership with SOS Mediterranee) have rescued 12,003 people during 89 different rescue operations.