Skeletal survivors from a drifting boat of illegal immigrants rescued by the Italian navy reported 13 people had died during the crossing from Libya, port officials said yesterday.

The officials in the Sicilian city of Palermo said 14 immigrants were rescued overnight off the island of Lampedusa. Seven of them were in critical condition, including two in a coma, after drifting at sea for days without food or water.

Survivors told the rescuers they threw overboard the bodies of 13 people after they died.

"They were in pitiful condition, reduced to skeletons and with their lips burnt by the sun. When we found them they could not stand on their feet, they looked like ghosts," said Stefano Bricchi, the captain of the Italian navy boat that carried out the rescue mission.

"Some of them, in halting English, told us they had been at sea for 20 days and that food and water supplies had run out after a week," he told ANSA news agency.

Thousands of illegal immigrants attempt to enter Italy every year after making the crossing from north Africa, often aboard rickety boats.

Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said this week more than 2,000 people had arrived in Lampedusa, off Sicily, in the past two weeks. He has asked the European Union to help stem the influx by launching sea patrols in the Mediterranean.