Nine migrants were found dead in a latest rescue operation in the Mediterranean early on Monday, while at least 144 migrants were saved, the Italian coast guard said.

The migrant boat trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach southern Italy capsized some 128.7 km off northern Libya, according to a coast guard statement.

The nine victims were apparently drowned on the craft. All survivors were transferred on an Italian navy ship to be brought to Sicily for first aid and assistance.

Coast guard cutters and one aircraft kept patrolling the area of the shipwreck throughout the day, looking for other possible survivors.

Overall, Italy rescued 5,629 people between April 10 and 12 in the Strait of Sicily, according to authorities.

Most of them were from Sub-Saharan countries such as Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Syria, and all seemed to have left from Libyan coasts, La Repubblica newspaper reported.

On Monday, the coast guard received new emergency calls regarding 10 other migrant boats reportedly on their way from Libya to Italy.

The latest rescue operations involved various maritime forces, including four ships and two vessels from the coast guard, nine cargo ships, an Italian navy ship and an Icelandic patrol vessel taking part in the Triton mission.

Triton is a mission coordinated by the European Union (EU) border control agency Frontex.

It was launched on Nov. 1, 2014 to replace a wider search-and-rescue mission in the Mediterranean called Mare Nostrum (Our Sea), which Italy had put in place since October 2013 after more than 400 migrants died in two shipwrecks off the tiny island of Lampedusa in Sicily.

Some 100,250 migrants were saved, and 728 people were arrested under suspicion of human trafficking during the Mare Nostrum mission, according to the Interior Ministry.

The Triton mission was designed on a smaller scale comparing to the Italian one, both in terms of financial resources and maritime means provided by those EU countries willing to contribute. The sea area covered by Triton patrolling is also smaller compared to Mare Nostrum.

In 2014, at least 218,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to try and enter Europe from its southern borders, and about 3,500 of them died in the attempt, the Refugee Agency of the United Nations (UNHCR) stated.

"This trend is expected to continue," the UNHCR added in a recent statement.

The UN agency has repeatedly appealed to EU authorities to increase rescue efforts in the Mediterranean to assist migrant boats and try to save as many lives as possible. Endit

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