Nearly 150 migrants feared dead after boat sinks in the Mediterranean

A rubber boat packed with migrants sank in the Mediterranean and the presumed sole survivor - a 16-year-old Gambian boy - told rescuers he believed all other passengers drowned, the International Migration Organization (IOM) said today.

A humanitarian vessel, the Iuventa, found the boy hanging onto a fuel tank in the sea yesterday. He was transferred first to an Italian Coast Guard ship, then to a Spanish frigate and taken to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

"He said that everyone else died. But there's some hope that the Italian Coast Guard picked up others," said IOM spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo in Rome, after speaking to staff in Lampedusa. It should become clear tomorrow whether others survived, as a Coast Guard vessel disembarks migrants in eastern Sicily that day, he said.

"The boy said they left Sabratha, Libya, a couple days ago on a rubber boat with 147 sub-Saharan Africans on board, including five children and some pregnant women," Di Giacomo said.

In the past two days, rescuers have picked up more than 1,100 migrants at sea, and recovered one body, Italy's Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard did not comment on the latest shipwreck.

So far this year nearly 600 migrants...