700 migrant drown on Libyan coast

In what may be one of the worst disasters of the Mediterranean migrant crisis as many as 700 people were feared dead after a fishing boat packed with migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight.

Twenty eight people were rescued and 24 bodies recovered from the 20 metre-long vessel, which sank around 70 miles from the Libyan coast, south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, the Italian coast guard said.

The death toll would bring the total number of dead persons since the beginning of the year to more than 1,500 as the flow of migrants seeking to flee poverty, war and insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East has continued.

Italian officials said 17 vessels from the navy and coast guard, merchant ships in the area, a Maltese patrol boat, as well as aircraft from the navy and coast guard, were involved in the search-and-rescue operation, which was being coordinated by the Italian coast guard in Rome. The boat is believed to have capsized when the migrants shifted to one side of the overcrowded vessel as a merchant ship approached.

Around 20,000 migrants have reached the Italian coast this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated but the number of deaths has risen almost nine-fold. In 2013, the previous government initiated the search-and-rescue operation "Mare Nostrum" or "Our Sea" after hundreds drowned in an incident off the coast of Lampedusa.