As many as 500 migrants could have died after traffickers rammed and sank their boat in the Mediterranean last week with another 200 missing in a separate incident, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says, quoting survivors.
Two Palestinians plucked from the water by a freighter on Thursday after their boat capsized near Malta told the organisation that there had been about 500 passengers on the vessel, which was wrecked on purpose by people smugglers.
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Migrants feared dead in Mediterranean
Hundreds of migrants are feared dead in separate shipwreck incidents in the Mediterranean Sea.
"Two survivors brought to Sicily told us that there had been at least 500 people on board. Nine other survivors were rescued by Greek and Maltese ships, but all the rest appear to have perished," said Flavio Di Giacomo, IOM's spokesman in Italy.
Details of the shipwreck could not be independently verified.
"If this story - which is being investigated by police - is confirmed, it would be the biggest shipwreck of recent years," Â the IOM said in a statement. "It would be particulary serious as it would not be an incident, but an episode of mass killing."
The IOM said it was also checking reports that some 200 people are missing following on a wreck on Sunday off Libya.
Al-Wasat news site, quoting a naval commander, reported that 160 migrants were feared to have drowned in the sinking on Sunday.
Some 36 people had been rescued, including a pregnant woman, and had been taken to hospital, navy spokesman Captain Ayyub Qasim told Al-Wasat.
Naval forces had headed to a location 16 kilometres out from the western coastal town of Tajoura after fishermen reported seeing large numbers of bodies in the water, Qasim said.
Migrant flows across the Mediterranean have sharply increased this year. The IOM has calculated that about 108,000 prospective asylum-seekers had arrived by sea in Italy up to late August, compared to less than 43,000 in 2013.
"The death toll in the Mediterranean in these hours is extremely grave ... 700 people may have died at sea over the past few days," the IOM statement said.
According to the survivors, the Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese migrants set out from Damietta in Egypt on September 6, and were forced to change boats several times during the crossing towards Europe.
The traffickers, who were on a separate boat, then ordered them onto another, smaller vessel, which many of the migrants feared was too small to hold them.
When they refused to cross over to the new boat, the furious traffickers reportedly rammed their boat until it capsized, the organisation said.
Italian police have opened an inquiry into the shipwreck.
According to the Italian navy, some 2380 migrants and asylum seekers were rescued over the weekend by Italy's large-scale naval deployment dubbed "Mare Nostrum", launched after over 400 people died in two shipwrecks last October.
In August the UN refugees agency (UNHCR) calculated that nearly 1900 migrants had drowned since January in attempts to reach Europe by sea.
"These tragic events show, on one side, how it is necessary for the high-sea rescue operations to continue (...), and on other, what level of aberration has been reached by human traffickers, as they are placing migrants on ever more rickety and overcrowded boats, directly or indirectly causing the death of thousands," IOM said.
AFP, McClatchy