Fishing boats rescued 50 people from a migrant boat capsizes off the coast of Lampedusa, a small Italian island close to the North Africa - but fear the rest of the passengers died.
Rescuers said it was highly unlikely that they will find any survivors, given the conditions of storm and how much time the passengers were in the water, independent journalist, Megan Williams said Wednesday in Rome, CBC News.
Rescue efforts were hampered by strong winds and choppy waters.
Williams said he made a of the reports now "" which may be more than 300 were on this particular boat."" However, officials not exactly sure how many people were on board.
Most of the passengers were at the origin of Somalia and Eritrea, from Italy of Libya.
"There are thousands of migrants from these countries and sub-Saharan Africa who expected mainly in Libya for years to try to come to the Italy," said Williams. "With the war in Libya now, many of these people thought 'we'll try to get out now', and they took these very dangerous boats paying smugglers."
The question of migrants are highly politicized in Italy, and the Government tried hard to block out the North Africa, she said.
Italy have signed an agreement with the Libya approximately three years, which included paying the Libya for patrolling its coast to prevent the migrants to leave.
Now Italy is trying to establish a similar agreement with the Tunisia, where thousands of migrants arrived in the last month or two. In fact, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has Tunisia this week to try to find an agreement.
"Italy has a very anti-immigrant policy at this stage, said Williams." And he complains that the European Union is not helping enough with these migrants because the Italian island is the first point of contact for Europe, and he wants the rest of Europe to assist in taking many of these migrants who come to this island. ?
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