More than 400 rescued people were brought ashore by Italian coastguards on Wednesday morning.

The number of people attempting to flee war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, particularly Eritreans and Syrians, has spiked in recent months, leading to huge numbers of people drowning in unseaworthy vessels.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says there have been 30 times as many deaths so far in 2015 as in the same period last year and the figure could rise to 30,000.

Also on Wednesday, Italy's parliament held a minute's silence for Sunday's disaster, in which more than 800 people died.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi then addressed MPs, saying he wanted asylum applications in Italy to start being processed by a "European team" and that more action was needed in countries where migrants originate in sub-Saharan Africa.