Nearly 700 migrants maybe dead at sea off Libyan coast: Italian media

Nearly 700 migrants are suspected to have died at sea when a packed boat capsized in international waters south of Italy's Sicily on Saturday night, local reports said on Sunday.

ANSA news agency said a Portuguese merchant ship, transiting in the area, some 110 km off Libya, and asked to rush to the spot, managed to recover 28 survivors after the Italian coast guard received an alert.

Frantic search-and-rescue operations have been launched in the area including Italian guard ship and craft, various merchant vessels and forces of Triton, a mission coordinated by the European Union (EU) border control agency Frontex.

According to first reconstructions, the boat was carrying around 700 migrants who moved to the same side of the boat all together to ask for help when they saw the merchant ship, which caused the boat to capsize.

"It might be one of the biggest tragedies happened in the Mediterranean," a spokeswoman of the Refugee Agency of the United Nations (UNHCR), Carlotta Sami, told Rai State television.

At least 218,000 migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea last year to enter the EU from its southern borders, and some 3,500 of them lost their lives in the attempt, the UNHCR said in a recent statement, adding that the trend is "expected to continue." Enditem