ROME - More than 900 people are feared to have perished after a fishing boat carrying illegal migrants sank off the Libyan coast Saturday night, the Italian coast  guard and a survivor said. Rescuers  on Sunday were sifting through groups of floating corpses in the Mediterranean to try and find survivors as Italy demanded an emergency EU summit on the migration crisis.

 Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said  "They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water. This could possibly be the biggest tragedy to have ever taken place in the Mediterranean. Children, men, and women have died."

 Muscat said the tragedy was further evidence that Italy and Malta needed more support from their European partners in dealing with the migrant crisis.

"Although we are seeing encouraging signs from European politicians, action must be taken," he said. "There is a tragedy going on in the Mediterranean. A time will come when Europe will be judged harshly for its inaction as it was judged when it had turned a blind eye to genocide."

 Twenty eight people were rescued in the incident, which happened inside Libyan waters, south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, an Italian coast guard official said. Twenty four dead bodies were plucked from the sea and placed on the deck of the Coast Guard vessel Gregoretti that was leading a huge search operation involving 17 Italian navy and coast guard vessels backed by coast guard and air force aircraft as well as a Maltese patrol boat.

 The 28 were rescued by the Portugese container ship King Jacob that had been en route to Libya. Maritime sources said the Italian coast guard directed the Portuguese vessel to help the fishing boat after a distress signal was received and that the boat may have capsized when the migrants saw the King Jacob and rushed to one side of the vessel, causing it to overturn. It was unclear whether survivors would be taken to the nearest port, La Valletta, Malta, or to a port in southeast Sicily though migrants reception centres there already are overflowing. The search operation was due to continue at least to Sunday evening, the coast guard said, adding that with sea temperatures of 17 celsius migrants could remain alive in the water for some time.

 An injured survivor flown to Catania said 950 people were on board the vessel with many locked into the hold. The passengers were from Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Zambia, Bangladesh and Ghana.

 If the figure of 900 was confirmed it would make the disaster the worst in the Strait of Sicily since the Second World War with the highest death toll since 366 people died and 20 others were listed as missing in a shipwreck of migrants off the island of Lampedusa June 3, 2013. 

 If the death toll from Saturday’s disaster is confirmed, it also will push up the number of deaths in the Mediterranean to around 1400, making 2015 the worst year on record during the decades-long migrant crisis in the southern Mediterranean.

Last Wednesday, another overcrowded migrant boat sank between Libya and Italy, causing up to 400 deaths.

 The new disaster grabbed the attention of the international community as French President François Hollande called for an urgent meeting of EU foreign and interior ministers.

 “The EU must reinforce the number of ships in Operation Triton, a name that perhaps is not appropriate,” said Hollande.

 Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called an urgent meeting of senior ministers for Sunday afternoon and EU high representative for foreign affairs Federica Mogherini said she would raise the need for greater EU assistance to solve the crisis at an EU ministerial meeting in Luxembourg Monday.

 Renzi demanded that an emergency EU summit be held on the migrant crisis within a week to consider ways of tackling the crisis.

 Pope Francis also appealed to the international community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more tragedies.

"They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. They were looking for a better life," he told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square.

"Faced with such a tragedy, I express my most heartfelt pain and promise to remember the victims and their families in prayer," he said, departing from his prepared text. "I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated."

The latest disaster is likely to strengthen calls for the EU to restart comprehensive search and rescue operations. Last October, Italy cancelled Operation Mare Nostum, a rescue mission that saved up to 100,000 lives last year. In its place the EU runs a smaller border patrol service, Operation Triton.

Save the Children's Justin Forsyth said: “EU leaders must hold an emergency meeting in person or by phone within 48 hours to expedite this process and agree an immediate plan to stop these drownings. Europe cannot look the other way while thousands die off our shores.”

The lawless state of Libya following the toppling of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has left criminal gangs of migrant smugglers a free hand to send a stream of boats carrying desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

 The latest drama led Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, to renew calls for Italy to institute a ‘naval blockade’ against Libya, as Lorenzo Guerini, the deputy secretary of Renzi’s Democratic Party, commenting that it was “nauseating” for right wing politicians he described as “jackals” to make political capital out of the tragedy.