Rescue workers carry the body of a migrant who drowned on the beach in the Sicilian village of Sampieri on Thursday. At least 13 people on a migrant boat arriving in Sicily drowned close to the coast near the eastern city of Ragusa, apparently after trying to disembark from their stranded vessel, Italian authorities said. They said the boat was carrying about 250 people. (Gianni Mania/Reuters)
At least 82 people died and scores were missing after a boat carrying migrants from Africa sank off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Thursday, officials and rescuers said.
The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusy Nicolini, said 82 dead bodies had been recovered, mostly Somalis and Eritreans, and the toll was rising, with the bodies being laid out on the harbour.
The coastguard said it appeared that there were between 400 and 500 migrants on the boat when it sank, and 150 had been saved so far.
Thousands of desperate migrants from Africa arrive in Italy on unsafe, overcrowded vessels every year, with most coming to Lampedusa, a tiny island just 113 kilometres from the coast of Tunisia.
Numbers have been boosted this year by thousands of refugees from the civil war in Syria, most of whom have arrived on the eastern coast of Sicily from Egypt.
Four coast guard and police vessels and two helicopters were in the area, and a submerged vessel of about 20 metres in length had been identified in the water after it caught fire and sank, officials said.
Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi said in a statement he was being kept constantly up to date about the situation, with the death toll expected to rise. Coastguard official Floriana Segreto said rescue operations were continuing.
A fishing boat raised the alarm at around 7:20 a.m. local time and began pulling people out of the water before coastguard vessels arrived on the scene.
The boat sank just four days after 13 migrants drowned when their boat foundered off eastern Sicily.
More than 100 rescued
Lupi said more needed to be done to combat people traffickers who co-ordinated the transport of migrants in crowded and unsafe vessels.
Off the coast of Syracuse, more than 100 hundred migrants were rescued.
Italian coastguard vessels reached two boats believed to be in trouble off the coast and helped the migrants to safety on coastguard vessels.
A total of 117 migrants were recovered, including 20 women and four children.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in July that around 40 deaths had been recorded in the first six months of 2013, a sharp reduction from the previous year after Italian and Maltese authorities improved co-ordination.
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