Dhaka: Bangladeshis were reported among the migrants aboard on the boat which was capsized in the Mediterranean on Sunday.

An overloaded boat crowded with as many as 700 desperate migrants capsized and sank off the Libyan coast on Sunday, and what authorities fear to be a major maritime disaster is provoking new, insistent calls on Europe to contain a humanitarian emergency unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea, reports Reuters.

The incident has raised pressure on Europe to face down anti-immigrant bias and find money for support as turmoil in Libya and the Middle East worsens the crisis.

A Bangladeshi survivor told authorities that 950 people were aboard. He also said that ‘plenty’ of them had been locked in the hold by smugglers, reports Associated Press.

It has been reported that Bangladeshi survivor was airlifted by helicopter to Sicily for medical treatment, while others were being treated aboard the Italian coast guard vessel Gregoretti.

Around 20,000 migrants have reached the Italian coast this year, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates. That is fewer than in the first four months of last year, but the number of deaths has risen almost nine-fold, Reuters reported.

Last week, around 400 migrants were reported to have died attempting to reach Italy from Libya when their boat capsized.

‘A tragedy is unfolding in the Mediterranean, and if the EU and the world continue to close their eyes, it will be judged in the harshest terms as it was judged in the past when it closed its eyes to genocides when the comfortable did nothing,’ Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.