BOATLOAD OF MIGRANTS FLEEING LIBYA LOST AT SEA

ROME—Italian authorities were losing hope of rescuing more than 200 migrants who remained lost at sea on Wednesday after a boat that had been ferrying them from Libya to Italy capsized in rough waters.

The migrants are part of the increasing flow of people that are trying to escape unrest in North Africa and reach Europe’s shores, even though European authorities have not come up with a coordinated policy on how to deal with the influx.

By Wednesday evening, Italy’s coast guard had rescued 53 from a group of up to 300 believed to be aboard a boat that sank about 40 miles from Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island off the coast of Tunisia, said Commander Cosimo Alessandro Nicastro.

The migrants, who were predominantly Somali, Eritrean and Ivory Coast nationals, had departed days ago from the port city of Zuwarah, in northwestern Libya, Cmdr. Nicastro said.

“With every hour that passes, the more difficult it gets to find anyone alive,” he said, pointing to cold and rough sea conditions.

A statement from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, said more than 200 migrants who had been aboard the ship were “presumed drowned.”

Cmdr. Nicastro said 15 bodies had been recovered in the water.

The incident highlights the daunting challenge facing European officials as they seek to forge a common policy for handling the influx.

In recent years, North African governments in Tunis and Tripoli played a major role in blocking migration to Europe, but that shield has melted away amid the unrest.

The Italian government said Wednesday it had reached a preliminary accord with Tunisia’s interim government to stem the flow of migrants from Tunisian shores.

It is unclear, however, how the accord will be enforced. The statement didn’t provide any details on the thorniest issues in the crisis, such as whether Italy will provide forces to patrol the waters off Tunisia and whether Tunisia will accept large numbers of recent migrants that Italy is seeking to expel.

Italy’s interior ministry said Rome planned to provide patrol boats and jeeps as part of the deal.

Some 20,000 migrants have landed on Italian shores since the unrest began in December, compared to about 1,000 in all of 2010.

Wednesday’s rescue mission was launched after migrants aboard the boat used a satellite phone to make an SOS call to officials in Malta in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the coast guard said.

The coast guard initially enlisted a fishing ship that was in the vicinity of the 13-meter (43-foot) migrant boat when the SOS call went out. A coastguard plane and search-and-rescue motorboats went out for hours, but the plane eventually returned to Italy as hope of finding more survivors dwindled, Cmdr. Nicastro said.

The UNHCR said survivors arriving in Lampedusa told their observers that the boat had been at sea for three days when it capsized. Three children and “many” women were among the passengers, the survivors according to the UNHCR.

“Italian naval forces did everything possible in this case, as in others, to save a large number of lives,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in a statement on Wednesday.

Libya has long been considered waystation for migrants fleeing violence in sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years, however, Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi plugged many of the routes used by the migrant boats, leaving hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants stuck in Libya.

As Col. Gadhafi fights to hold onto power, many Western officials fear that a massive migrant wave will be unleashed into the Mediterreanean.

“These people…fled war and persecution in their countries of origin, and in an attempt to reach safety in Italy, they tragically lost their life,” said High Commissioner António Guterres.