3 would-be immigrants die in Mediterranean shipwreck

ROME – Italian coastguards retrieved the bodies of three would-be immigrants from the Mediterranean between the Libyan coast and the Italian island of Lampedusa overnight after their boat got into trouble, ANSA news agency reported Sunday.

Coastguards also assisted 62 men and eight women, one of them pregnant, who were taken to an Italian navy vessel and were expected on Lampedusa later Sunday.

ANSA did not give the nationalities of the three dead women or the people rescued.

Two coastguard ships continued the search in the area, 35 miles off the Libyan coast and 140 miles from Lampedusa.

Italian authorities moved after a call for help made by satellite phone, and informed colleagues in Libya and Malta.

The stricken boat was later spotted by a Maltese plane.

In September a boat carrying over 100 Tunisian migrants sank off Lampedusa. Rescue services only managed to pull 56 people to safety and the others were lost at sea.

Between the start of the year and September 8,000 clandestine migrants landed on Italian beaches, the Italian government has said.