A dramatic rescue mission to bring an abandoned cargo ship carrying hundreds of migrants under control has been carried out by the Italian Air Force.

Six coastguard officers were airlifted aboard the ship after stormy seas made it impossible to reach the runaway vessel by boat.

They took control of the Sierra-Leone-flagged ship, the Ezadeen, which was abandoned by people traffickers as it headed towards the southern tip of Italy.

It is the second ship of its kind to be abandoned at sea in several days.

Rescue pilot Francesco Pastore said: "The mission was very difficult due to the conditions."

The ship was towed by an Icelandic Coast Guard ship to Italy and arrived at the port of Corigliano hours later.

The 197ft-long ship, which was carrying pregnant women and children, mostly thought to be fleeing Syria, was rescued floating around 40 miles off Capo di Leuca.

Coastguard Commander Filippo Marini said one of the migrants on board was able to operate the ship's radio and pleaded for help saying: "We're without crew, we're heading toward the Italian coast and we have no one to steer."

Before losing power, the ship had been moving at a brisk seven knots and had been spotted by a coastguard plane 80 miles offshore shortly after nightfall on Thursday.

The coastguard asked for assistance from Icelandic patrol boat Tyr, which was in the area on a mission with Frontex, the European Union's border agency.

The Tyr was able to draw alongside the runaway ship, but initially the weather conditions made boarding impossible.

The drama comes two days after Italian sailors intercepted an unmanned freighter carrying more than 700 mostly Syrian migrants that had been heading for the rocks in Italy's Puglia region.

The Moldovan-registered Blue Sky M cargo ship got to within five miles of a disaster before six navy officers were lowered on to the ship by helicopter and succeeded in bringing it under control.

The vessel's human cargo included 60 children and two pregnant women, one of whom gave birth on board, according to the Italian Red Cross.

Many of the migrants on the ship were treated for hypothermia and broken limbs.

More than 170,000 people have been rescued by Italy in the last 14 months and it is estimated that hundreds, possibly thousands, have perished trying to make the crossing.