Around 150 African refugees fleeing Libya were feared dead on Thursday after their boat capsized in stormy weather in the middle of the Mediterranean and choppy seas severely hampered rescue efforts.
Dozens of bodies, including those of young children, were seen floating in the water but had not been recovered due to a storm.
“We are still searching for 150 people. The hope of finding other survivors is fading by the hour,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said in parliament, a day after 53 survivors were plucked from the sea.
Italian and Maltese coastguard vessels and planes were taking part in the high-seas rescue operation.
“The rescue operation is being made more difficult by the ongoing storm … we’ve not been recovering the bodies because of the rough sea,” said Vittorio Alessandro, a spokesman for the coast guard on the island of Lampedusa.
“The weather is supposed to calm tonight, though the search is more difficult in the dark,” he added.
Alessandro said that 20 corpses had been spotted in the area on Wednesday, while helicopter pilots who flew over the scene of the accident said they had seen “dozens” of bodies near the boat.
The 13m boat got into trouble in the early hours of Wednesday amid high waves some 74km south of Lampedusa in waters that are formally under Maltese jurisdiction.
“Our hope is of finding a survivor, maybe someone who held on to a piece of the wreckage,” said Pietro Carosia, head of the coast guard in Lampedusa, where more than 20 000 mostly Tunisian migrants have landed in recent weeks.
The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration estimated some 300 people were on the boat and more than 200 people were therefore missing.
The Italian coastguard put the number at closer to 200 and said 20 bodies had been spotted so far, putting the number of missing at around 130.
“Yesterday’s tragedy shows departures from Libya’s coast are intensifying. These are all people from sub-Saharan Africa fleeing from places where there are wars and where humanitarian conditions are terrible,” Maroni said.