Originally published on October 4, 2013

Almost 100 people were killed and scores remain missing after a boat carrying up to 500 African migrants sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Thursday (October 3). The incident appears to be one of the worst accidents involving migrants trying to travel to Europe from Africa.

Reuters reports, "The coastguard said 150 survivors had been rescued so far of the between 400 and 500 migrants thought to be on the 20-metre (66 ft) boat that caught fire and sank about 1 km (half a mile) off the island.

"The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it believed there were around 500 passengers, all Eritreans who had boarded in Libya.

"Almost 500 people were reported dead or missing making the crossing from Tunisia to Italy last year, the UNHCR says. Numbers have been boosted by thousands of refugees from the civil war in Syria.

"Migrants frequently land on Lampedusa, just 113 km (70 miles) from the coast of Tunisia, often picked up at sea by the Italian coastguard in dangerously overcrowded boats.

"The stream of migrants is a humanitarian and political problem for the Italian government. Some 15,000 reached Italy and Malta - 13,200 and 1,800 respectively - by sea last year, the UNHCR says.

"A fishing boat raised the alarm at around 7:20 a.m. (1:20 a.m. ET) and began pulling people out of the water before coastguard vessels arrived on the scene."

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