Six migrants drown off the coast in Catania

The bodies of six dead migrants were washed ashore a beach in Catania, Sicily at the break of dawn on Saturday.

A group of 120 migrants, including women and children, was trying to reach the shore after travelling aboard a fishing vessel. Six migrants tried to escape from the vessel which stopped a few metres away from the coast at the Kennedy beachfront in Catania.

However, these migrants, thought to be Syrians, were not capable of swimming and drowned after finding themselves in difficulty.

"It looked like an apocalyptic scene," a swimmer who was on the beach said.

"Some migrants fled immediately after landing while the bodies of those poor people who died were lined up on the shoreline."

The Italian police and coast guard are patrolling the area and a team of divers are controlling the vessel and the seabed to verify whether other corpses remained at the bottom of the sea.