250 Migrants Missing After Boat Sinks Off Italy

The vessel, which capsized in the predawn dark, had been carrying mostly sub-Saharan Africans, including at least one pregnant woman. The capsized vessel was among the first to try to reach Lampedusa from Libya since fighting began in Libya in February. About 22,000 migrants have arrived on the island since January, most of them from Tunisia.

The shipwreck is an alarming sign of the challenges facing Italy as it contends with a wave of migrants leaving North Africa. Aid officials on Wednesday called for a swifter response in boat rescues and better coordination among Mediterranean countries in distinguishing between “economic immigrants” seeking work in Europe and refugees seeking asylum.

After interviewing survivors on Lampedusa, Italian officials and the International Organization for Migration estimated that more than 250 people were missing.

By Wednesday afternoon, an Italian patrol boat and a fishing boat had rescued 50 people and had taken them to Lampedusa, but coast guard officials feared that many more were still at sea, and rough weather was hampering rescue efforts.

“We are still looking for at the least 150 people in the sea, but we fear there could be even more than that,” said Cmdr. Valerio Alessandro, a spokesman for the Italian port authorities. He later revised that number to 250, and he said about 20 bodies had been seen in the water.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the boat left Libya carrying migrants and asylum seekers from Somalia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Chad and Sudan. The organization said that an estimated 40 women and 5 children had been on board, and that only 2 women had been rescued so far.

Early Wednesday morning, an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat reached the stricken vessel after those aboard, using a satellite phone, had sought help from the Maltese maritime authorities, Commander Alessandro said.

Just as the coast guard boat reached the vessel, which was taking on water, its engine stalled. Strong waves and panicking passengers caused the vessel to rock, people began falling overboard and it capsized.

Italian Coast Guard officials were using aircraft and boats to search for possible survivors, with help from the financial police, Commander Alessandro said.

Lying in a clinic in Lampedusa, Peter Hougot, 29, from Cameroon, recounted the crossing from Libya. “My 24-year-old girlfriend died, and I lost her and my friend who was traveling with us,” Mr. Hougot said.

He said he had been working as a house painter in Libya for the past two years and had paid $400 to a middleman to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.

He said that he had refused to join a militia fighting for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and that in response he was told “to go out to go to Italy.”

In a television interview, one survivor said he had paid a Somali group for passage to Italy from Libya.

“The survivors are all in a state of shock,” said Simona Moscarelli, an official for the International Organization for Migration who was acting as an interpreter for the rescued migrants and the police in Lampedusa on Wednesday.

“One man told me he had lost his 1-year-old son. One of the two surviving women told me how she had lost her husband,” Ms. Moscarelli added in a statement.

The boat capsized about 39 miles from Lampedusa, which since January has attracted thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing unrest in North Africa. Some of the migrants from the boat said in Italian television interviews that they had come from the western port city of Zuwarah, near the Tunisian border.

Last week, Lampedusa was on the brink of collapse, running low on food and water, with thousands of migrants sleeping in the open air. In response, Italy transferred many of them to makeshift tent camps on the Italian mainland, from which a number of them easily escaped and tried to make their way to other parts of Italy and Europe to seek work.

The spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, Laura Boldrini, said the shipwreck underscored the need for better coordination in identifying the migrants arriving in Italy from North Africa.

So far, most have been Tunisians seeking work, Ms. Boldrini said, but in recent days more boats have been coming from Libya and could contain refugees. “At the moment, this has been very limited, but we have to be ready for the possibility they will come,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Italian interior minister, Roberto Maroni, signed an agreement with the Tunisian government to try to block the flow of migrants from that country. The Tunisian authorities will accept the repatriation of new arrivals, and Italy will provide Tunisia with boats and off-road vehicles to put into effect the border controls that have almost ceased since Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted from the Tunisian presidency in a popular revolt in January.

Italy said it would also grant some Tunisian arrivals six-month temporary residence permits.

Critics have objected that the agreement does not set any dates or provide practical details on how the repatriation would take place. In a statement on Wednesday on the Italian Interior Ministry’s Web site, Mr. Maroni expressed satisfaction with the renewed cooperation between Italy and Tunisia, but he also said the agreement “will now have to be implemented.”