A French navy ship sent to boost EU migrant patrols in the Mediterranean rescued 217 people Saturday off the coast of Libya, officials said.

The migrants -- all men -- had been on board three boats, the authorities said, adding that two suspected people smugglers were also caught and will be handed over to Italian police.

The U.N. envoy for Libya, Bernardino Leon, has given warring parties until Sunday to respond to his latest proposals for a power-sharing deal that could pull the country out of chaos.

Leon told a closed-door Security Council meeting on Wednesday that the responses would help lay the groundwork for another round of talks and played down prospects for a quick breakthrough.

A Syrian shipmaster has been arrested in Beirut on charges of smuggling narcotics to Europe, Egypt and Libya.

The 44-year-old sea captain was apprehended in the Corniche al-Mazraa district by agents from the central anti-narcotics bureau of the Internal Security Forces, according to an ISF statement issued on Wednesday.

The United Nations on Tuesday deplored "dire conditions" at migrant detention centers in Libya and said it was helping some of the 1,242 people rescued from sea over the past 10 days.

The number of migrants or asylum seekers in eight holding centers across the country had ballooned to 2,663 from 1,455 a month ago, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Sitting in his sparsely furnished flat in Tel Aviv, Fikre Mariam lowers his eyes and recounts watching footage of his cousin -- a fellow Eritrean asylum seeker -- beheaded by jihadists in Libya.

"It was horrible. I've never seen anything like it in my life," says Mariam, one of tens of thousands of African migrants who has sought asylum in Israel.

Tunisian fishermen rescued a group of around 80 migrants Friday after their boat got into difficulties while trying to sail from Libya to Europe, the Red Crescent told AFP.

"The flow (of illegal immigrants) does not seem to be stopping," said Mongi Slim, head of the Red Crescent in the southeastern port of Zarzis near the North African country's border with violence-plagued Libya.

British Labor party leader Ed Miliband is to vow to end the country's "small-minded isolationist" attitude to Europe if he becomes prime minister after an election in two weeks' time.

In a Friday speech, the left-leaning party leader is to accuse Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron of risking Britain's national interests by giving in to eurosceptics, according to pre-released remarks.

Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio are early frontrunners to become the next president of the United States, according to a well-regarded poll released Thursday.

Clinton -- a celebrity former secretary of state, first lady and New York senator -- who is bidding to become America's first female president, is head-and-shoulders above her 2016 Democratic party rivals according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

A Libyan television journalist involved in coverage of fighting between Islamist militias and pro-government forces in the second city of Benghazi has been assassinated, officials and witnesses said Thursday.

Muftah al-Qatrani, director of the private production company Al-Anwar, was killed by a gunshot to the head on Wednesday, an interior ministry official told Agence France Presse.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has urged the international community to recognize the Armenian genocide, expressing fears of further such atrocities against Christians in the world.

Al-Rahi, who is in Armenia to attend the ceremony to mark the centenary of the World War I killings by Ottoman Turks, was quoted by the National News Agency as saying on Thursday that “the international community and people with goodwill should recognize the genocide.”