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An African migrant and her son watch a memorial service for the deaths of hundreds of migrants in last week’s Lampedusa boat disaster, in Tel Aviv

A migrant boat capsized between Sicily and Tunisia on Friday and hundreds of persons were in the sea, the Italian navy said, and the nationwide news agency ANSA said corpses had been dotted.

The occurrence appeared just over a week after at smallest 319 persons drowned when a vessel carrying Eritrean and Somali migrants sank beside the south Italian island of Lampedusa.

There are at least 200 persons in the ocean and our helicopters are picking them up, said a navy spokesman, adding that two navy boats were also on the view.

Last week’s catastrophe was one of the poorest in a long migrant urgent situation that has glimpsed tens of thousands of people arriving in little, unsafe vessels in south Italy.

Lampedusa, a tiny isle established midway between Sicily and Tunisia, has conveyed the brunt.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 32,000 have reached in south Italy and Malta this year alone, round two thirds of whom have filed demands for asylum.

Although most migrants come from sub-Saharan Africa, this year many are escaping the Syrian civil conflict or political turmoil in Egypt and other parts of North Africa. Many are drawn by wants of finding work in Europe and often do not stay in Italy.