Migrant boat capsizes off Italian coast

A boat carrying migrants capsized between Sicily and Tunisia Friday, casting an estimated 250 people into the sea, an Italian navy spokesman said. At least 33 were killed, according to the Italian navy and the national news agency ANSA. The Italian coast guard said more than 200 passengers had been rescued.

The incident comes just over a week after more than 300 people drowned when a boat carrying Eritrean and Somali migrants sank near the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

Coast guard spokesman Marco Di Milla said the boat had been located by tracing satellite coordinates after the coast guard received a distress call from someone on board.

A statement from the Maltese armed forces said that since the boat was in its search-and-rescue waters, a Maltese aircraft was dispatched to the scene. The aircraft dropped a life raft for victims while they waited for a patrol boat to arrive.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East try to cross the Mediterranean Sea each year, seeking a better life in Europe, but the journey is fraught with danger.

After last week's Lampedusa incident, its survivors said the ship began taking on water just a few hundred yards from the Italian coast. They said three fishing boats ignored their pleas for help, and passengers ignited a blanket in the hopes of alerting the coast guard, to no avail.

Italy has called on the European Union to provide more assistance in dealing with the surge in refugees who are fleeing crises in North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East at the rate of tens of thousands per year.

Al Jazeera and wire services