ROME: Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu has described it as “a terrible tragedy that weighs on the civil consciences of Europe”.

Stefano Valfre’, the 34-year-old captain of the Italian fishing boat that first sighted the boat with the heap of bodies of 13 would-be immigrants on board, says he will never forget the “frightened stares” and “skeleton-like bodies” of its survivors.

Dozens of Somali nationals, perhaps as many as 70, are now believed to have died of hunger and dehydration during their voyage of desperation across the Mediterranean Sea, from a port in Libya to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

What is normally a two or three-day journey, survivors said, turned into a nightmare when the 12-metre boat’s engines stopped functioning, leaving the vessel stranded for weeks some 50 nautical miles off the nearest Italian coast.

“When they died, all we could do was throw their bodies overboard,” one of the boat’s 15 survivors, speaking in broken English, told reporters.

Italy’s coastguard says it cannot yet put a definite figure on the number of victims and officials say witnesses’ accounts still need to be checked.

But Sunday’s tragedy has once more highlighted the plight of tens of thousands of would-be immigrants who attempt to reach the prosperous European Union through Italy each year.

Only last week, at least seven Africans, including three children, died while attempting to reach Lampedusa. A Somali citizen has since been arrested on suspicion of human smuggling.

In one of the worst such incidents in recent history, at least 200 immigrants drowned on Christmas Day 1996 when their boat collided with another ship in a stretch of water between Malta and Sicily.

Despite government claims that the number of landings this year has decreased by 40 per cent over 2002, an estimated 10,000 immigrants continue to arrive in Sicily alone each year. Of these, 6,000 arrive on the tiny island of Lampedusa alone.

“We are facing a tragedy of biblical proportions,” says Bruno Siragusa, mayor of Lampedusa.

His island, which extends over an area of 20 square kilometres and has a population of 5,600, lays closer to the Tunisian coast than to Sicily. In recent years, it has witnessed a growing influx of illegal immigrants from Africa and Asia. And Mayor Siragusa now says his island can no longer cope.

On Sunday, it ran out of coffins and was forced to request dozens from the Italy’s mainland.

“We can no longer cope on our own. We need help from everyone, including the rest of Europe,” Siragusa told the Ansa news agency.

Interior Minister Pisanu, speaking during a meeting with fellow European ministers in France, says hundreds of immigrants have died in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year.

Pisanu and Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose government currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, have both said it was time Europe began helping Italy deal with its immigration conundrum.

Of the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who reach Italy’s shores each year, ministers noted, many continue their journey north, to other destinations in Europe.

Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government has placed the fight against illegal immigration high on its agenda.

But eliminating the problem cannot be done by simply increasing the number of patrols at sea, experts say.

“We need to tighten our grip on human traffickers,” Frattini said on Monday, “but we also need to provide more assistance to those countries from which immigrants flee.”—dpa