ROME, Aug 8: Twenty-eight would-be refugees died attempting to reach Italy by boat from north Africa, Italian police said on Sunday, citing accounts from some of the 74 survivors rescued by a freighter off the Sicilian coast.

The would-be clandestine immigrants were picked up from their drifting boat Saturday by the crew of the container ship Zuiderdiep some 130 nautical miles southeast of Sicily and landed at the port of Syracuse, Italian authorities said.

The survivors told police 100 people had been packed on board their 14-metre vessel when it set out on a nine-day voyage from the Libyan coast. "We have interrogated some people who had an exact knowledge of the number of immigrants aboard," Syracuse's police chief Vincenzo Mauro told reporters.

They said 28 of those on board died of exhaustion and exposure during their nine-day ordeal and their bodies were thrown overboard. Doctor Giuseppina Pignatello told Italy's ANSA news agency the survivors "were in a pitiful state, suffering badly from dehydration and exposure. All of them were soaking wet and the wind across the deck of the ship didn't help."

Sixteen people, including two women, were taken to hospital shortly after the ship landed the immigrants early Sunday. The others were taken to a local school which had been turned into a makeshift reception centre.

The ship's captain told police he was en route from Gibraltar to Turkey when his crew spotted the immigrants' overcrowded boat. One had to be airlifted to hospital in Malta for urgent medical treatment the day before while the ship was still at sea.

Authorities said the refugees had first claimed they were from Sudan and demanded political asylum, but after close questioning had admitted coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire. They said they had been travelling for 15 days, nine of which were spent at sea. -AFP