Ten women die as refugee boat capsizes

The women were found dead in the bottom of a partially submerged dinghy, according to Italian coast guard spokesman Captain Cosimo Nicastro.

The Italian coast guard came across the scene, as the crew from the patrol boat the Diciotti managed to rescue 107 of the people trapped on the sinking dinghy.

In a separate rescue operation, the same crew saved another 116 people aboard another three rubber boats in distress in the same area between Sicily and Libya.

On Thursday, Italian authorities prepared to begin removing the remains of hundreds of corpses from a fishing boat which sank off the coast of Libya last year, in one of the worst maritime accidents in the Mediterranean since World War II.

Nearly 120 bodies have already been recovered from the seabed but hundreds of corpses are believed to be trapped below deck.

Italian Prime Minsiter Matteo Renzi, who authorised the recovery operations, said on Thursday the horror had helped to change Europe's approach to the refugee crisis.

"This ship contains stories, faces, people, not only a number of corpses," he said in a post on his Facebook page.

"I authorised the navy to salvage the wreck to give burials to these brothers and sisters of ours who would otherwise have stayed for ever at the bottom of the sea."

Refugees pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers to get on to the boats, which are often overcrowded, low on supplies, and not fit to travel long distances.

The UN refugee agency estimates that from April 19 2015, to today, about 4,937 people have died while making the journey across the sea to Europe.

More than 64,000 people have reportedly landed at Italian ports since the beginning of the year, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN.