Lampedusa migrant shipwreck

Italy's coastguard said Wednesday it had recovered six bodies after a migrant boat sank this week off the southern coast with more than 60 people reported missing, including many children.

Twelve people were rescued after the sailing boat sank around 120 nautical miles off the coast of Calabria overnight Sunday-Monday, although one of them died after disembarking.

Demonstrators were due to rally in Athens on Friday to mark the anniversary of a shipwreck that killed hundreds of migrants off Greece and demand answers about the causes of the disaster and the fate of relatives.

Nine men charged over the worst shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea this year that killed at least 82 people were detained pending trial, the coastguard said on Wednesday, while the European Union promised more funds and actions on migration.

The death toll from the sinking of a migrant ship off the Italian island of Lampedusa has increased to nine, according to the Italian Coast Guard, quoted by the DPA.

A boat crowded with 700 migrants overturned north of Libya on Saturday, leaving at least 24 confirmed dead and many missing. Italy's Coast Guard stated that the migrants' 20-meter vessel could have capsized as the people on board rushed to one side of the craft after seeing a Portuguese merchant vessel approach it.

As many as 700 people are feared dead after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, a United Nations official said on April 19. 

Italian police arrested 15 African men suspected of throwing about a dozen Christians from a migrant boat in the Mediterranean on April 16, as the crisis off southern Italy intensified. 

Forty-one more deaths were reported in a separate incident.