French charity SOS Mediterranee has lashed out at clothing giant Benetton over an advertising campaign featuring a photograph of migrants being rescued at sea.

"SOS Mediterranee fully dissociates itself from this campaign which displays a picture taken while our teams were rescuing people in distress at sea on June 9," it said on Twitter Tuesday.

The picture -- published online and in newspapers, according to the NGO -- showed migrants in a dinghy wearing red life vests with the logo "United Colors of Benetton" at the bottom.

The "dignity of survivors must be respected at all times," said SOS Mediterannee. "The human tragedy at stake in the Mediterranean must never be used for any commercial purposes."

"SOS Mediterranee does not give its consent for any commercial use of its pictures."

Benetton published two publicity photographs on its Twitter account featuring migrants, one credited to SOS Mediterannee and another to the Italian news agency ANSA.

A ship operated by SOS Mediterannee, the Aquarius, rescued 630 migrants in the Mediterranean last week. The vessel was caught in a major row after Italytarget="_blank"'>