Horror shipwreck kills 41 migrants in deadly crossing from Tunisia to Italy

An estimated 41 migrants have died as a result of a shipwreck off the coast of Italy, according to survivors.

A group of four people, originally from the Ivory Coast and Guinea, told rescuers that they had on a boat carrying 45 people travelling from Sfax in Tunisia which sank near Lampedusa within hours of setting sail.

In excess of 1,800 people have died so far this year in the crossing from North Africa to Europe.

Tunisian authorities describe Sfax, roughly about 80 miles from Lampedusa, as a popular gateway for migrants trying to access Europe.

Italian patrol boats and charity groups have rescued 2,000 people arriving on the island in recent days.

Days earlier, dozens of migrants were dramatically rescued on Sunday as they foundered in the sea or clung to a rocky reef after three boats launched by smugglers were shipwrecked in rough waters in separate incidents over the weekend.

Survivors said some 30 fellow migrants were missing from capsized vessels.

In a especially risky operation, two helicopters battled strong winds to pluck to safety, one by one, the migrants, including a child and two pregnant women, who had been stranded for nearly two days on a steep, rocky reef of tiny Lampedusa island.

The migrants had been clinging to the jagged rocks after their boat smashed into the reef late on Friday.

All 34 migrants who endured two nights on the reef were rescued, said Federico Catania, a spokesperson for the Alpine assistance group whose experts were lowered from a hovering Italian air force helicopter.

Migrants, some wearing shorts and flip-flops, clung to their rescuers as they were pulled up into the copter.

A firefighters' helicopter also carried out some of the rescues.

The two women, including one in an advanced stage of pregnancy, were examined by medical personnel, said Maria Ylenia Di Paola, a nurse on Lampedusa.

She told Italian state TV that the women were dehydrated and cold, “but above all they were psychologically tried".

Separately, survivors of two boats that capsized on Saturday some 23 nautical miles (42.5 kilometers) southwest of Lampedusa told rescuers that about 30 fellow migrants were missing.

The Coast Guard said that in two operations it saved 57 migrants and recovered the bodies of a child and of a woman.

Speaking on Sunday, Ignazio Schintu, an official of the Italian Red Cross, said so many people had attempted the crossing in recent days that 2,450 migrants were currently housed at Lampedusa's temporary residence, which has a capacity of about 400.