The report, which said the boat capsized on Monday shortly after departing from the port of Zarzis in southern Tunisia, came as hundreds of mostly Tunisian migrants landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

ANSA said 12 boats carrying 816 migrants have arrived in the past few hours.

In Tunisia, neither the police not the army were able to confirm the incident, but one member of the emergency services in the Tunisian port of Zarzis said a navy vessel had been sent to the suspected accident zone.

One taxi driver in the town said he had seen a heavily overloaded boat leave the port on Sunday afternoon.

It had left the port "with more than a hundred people on board when its normal capacity must be around 50," he told said on early Tuesday.

AFP