CAIRO: At least 40 people drowned and around 100 are missing after a boat carrying illegal immigrants from Libya to Italy capsized, an Egyptian security official said on Monday.
Forty bodies have been recovered after the boat that sank shortly after leaving the port of Zuwarah, about 100 km west of Tripoli, on June 7, the official said, citing a report from the Egyptian embassy in Libya.
An Egyptian and a Bangladeshi man are the only passengers known to have survived, with the Egyptian survivor saying that around 150 people were on the boat, including 50 Egyptians from the Nile Delta town of Zaqaziq, when it sank.
The Egyptian, named as Wael Nagui Abdel Mutagali, was pulled from the Mediterranean by a passing boat and returned to Libya.
The embassy report quoted him as saying that the Egyptians had each paid $2,000 to an Egyptian living in Libya to be taken to Italy.
Libyan authorities have been unable to identify most of the dead because of their decomposed state, although Abdel Mutagali said that most of the non-Egyptian migrants were from Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh.
The Italian authorities on Monday, meanwhile, reported a wave of illegal migrant arrivals.
Italian shores, especially the small island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, are a favorite destination for those making the perilous crossing from Libya and other parts of North Africa in the hope of a new life in Europe.
Ninety illegal migrants on two boats, one of which was carrying 44 Somalis, including 13 women and seven children, were intercepted off the coast of Lampedusa on Monday, Italian customs and coast guards officials said.
Some 404 other migrants on seven small boats also reached Lampedusa on Sunday.
Fifty-four more migrants were rescued by the Maltese navy. Six Somalians including some children also drowned when their boat sank on Sunday, said a government statement.
Last November, 26 Egyptian would-be migrants drowned off the Italian coast.
In August, the Egyptian navy picked up 91 would-be illegal immigrants headed to Italy after their boat broke down on the high seas.
The hungry and thirsty men were rescued off the coast of Cyprus having drifted for four days and were returned to Egypt. -AFP
