A group of 44 migrants are being presumed dead after their boat was found capsized off the Libyan coast on Tuesday.

In a tweet, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said sources in Libya had informed them report that a boat carrying “at least 44 people” had sunk off the coast of Sabratha in western Libya.

“It’s impossible to know how many other shipwrecks go unnoticed due to poor and insufficient search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean,” the NGO said.

In a separate tweet, Alarm Phone, which acts as an independent support service for people crossing the Mediterranean to the EU, said it too was alerted to the news after the boat was understood to have washed up on Libyan sands.

A spokeswoman for the Armed Forces of Malta said they had no information on the washed up boat and if any migrants had indeed lost their lives.

Meanwhile, an Italian charity ship carrying 49 migrants rescued at sea said earlier on Tuesday that Rome had refused to let it dock in the latest stand-off between the government and private aid vessels.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Monday reiterated that Italy's ports were “closed” to new migrant arrivals.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.