Migrant boat accident kills dozens between Libya and Italy

More than 30 migrants, including children, drowned on Wednesday when people without life-jackets fell from a boat into the sea off the Libyan coast before they could be hauled into rescue boats.

British and Spanish navy ships, aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF), three merchant ships and a tug boat joined rescue group MOAS and the Italian coast guard and navy to carry out the rescues.

MOAS, which operates in the Mediterranean, said on Wednesday that its staff were pulling bodies out of the water.

"Most are toddlers," co-founder Chris Catrambone said on Twitter at the time.

But on Thursday, as a rescue vessel loaded with hundreds of survivors sailed north, the rescue group clarified the initial assessment, saying seven children, 14 women and 12 men had died.

The people tumbled into the water when a boat carrying around 750 passengers partially capsized, the rescue group's updated statement says.

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There are approximately 600 survivors aboard the Phoenix, which is heading toward Italy. 

"Several survivors are still in critical condition, including a six-month pregnant woman who is being monitored for pregnancy-related complications following the stress of losing her young son yesterday," the statement says.

More survivors were safely on a tugboat.

"We are all devastated by the needless loss of life yesterday, particularly that of young children, MOAS director Regina Catrambone says in the statement.

"We strongly urge the G7 leaders currently meeting in Sicily, at the heart of this humanitarian crisis, to focus on implementable humanitarian solutions, rather than pushing unrealistic agendas centred around border control."

More than 1,300 people have died this year on the world's most dangerous crossing for migrants, after boarding flimsy boats to flee poverty and war across Africa and the Middle East.

Last Friday, more than 150 disappeared at sea, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday, citing testimony collected after survivors disembarked in Italy. In the past week, more than 7,000 migrants have been plucked from boats in international waters off the western coast of Libya, where people smugglers operate with impunity.

Despite efforts by Italy and the European Union to train and equip the UN-backed government in Tripoli and its coast guard to fight traffickers, migrants are arriving in record numbers.

Disputes are also brewing between the Libyan coast guard and aid groups. MSF and SOS Mediterranee said officials from the Tripoli-based force had boarded a migrant boat during a rescue on Tuesday, robbing the migrants and firing shots into the air.

More than 60 people fell into the water in the ensuing panic, but no one was injured as life-jackets had already been given out, MSF and SOS Mediterranee said, broadly corroborating an earlier report by humanitarian group Jugend Rettet.

"Italian and European authorities should not be providing support to the Libyan coast guard," MSF representative Annemarie Loof said. "This support is further endangering people's lives."

G7 summit

Italy is hosting a meeting of the world's seven major industrialised nations in Sicily on Friday and Saturday, and is pushing the group, which includes the United States, to put migration, Libya's stabilization and African development at the top of the agenda.

"The tragedy of children dying in the Mediterranean is a wake-up call to leaders meeting in Sicily," said Justin Forsyth, deputy executive director of the UN Children's Fund, who is travelling to the summit.

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Authorities have diverted rescue vessels to the mainland from their usual ports in Sicily during the summit, keeping the migration crisis out of sight but not out of mind. More than 50,000 migrants have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy so far this year, a 46 per cent increase on the same period of last year, the Interior Ministry said this week.

Most rescues take place just outside the 20-kilometre mark that separates Libyan territory from international waters. It is a busy stretch of sea where humanitarian vessels and the Libyan coast guard are joined by scavengers hoping to recover abandoned migrant boats and their engines. After Tuesday's skirmish, Jugend Rettet said the Libyans towed two migrant boats back to shore while humanitarian groups brought more than 1,000 on board.