CALLS are intensifying for the European Union to prevent migrant deaths, with at least 400 people drowning in three Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks in just over a week.
"I don't know how many more people need to die at sea before something gets done," Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said in an interview with the BBC on Saturday.
"As things stand we are building a cemetery within our Mediterranean Sea."
One vessel sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on October 3, carrying more than 500 passengers.
There were 155 survivors, while the provisional death count was raised on Saturday to 359, as rescuers found the bodies of 20 more victims.
A second deadly accident took place on Friday afternoon, about 80 nautical miles southwest of Malta and 60 nautical miles southeast of Lampedusa.
Italian and Maltese rescuers found 34 bodies, while there were more than 200 survivors.
Also on Friday, at least 12 people died and 116 were rescued after a migrant boat sank off the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria.
Egyptian state-run newspaper al-Ahram said the vessel was carrying about 150 people, mainly Palestinians and Syrians.
Pope Francis, a champion of migrants' rights, decried indifference towards the tragedies.
"Lord, have mercy! Too often we are blinded by our comfortable lives, and refuse to see those dying at our doorstep," he wrote on Twitter.
The message was accompanied by the #Lampedusa hashtag.
The migration crisis is due to be discussed by EU leaders at an October 24-25 summit in Brussels.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, the bloc's top migration official, is proposing vastly expanded sea patrols by EU border agency Frontex.
"These new horrible events ... stress even more strongly the urgency of a wide Frontex search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to Spain, to better detect and assist boats in distress," she said on Friday.
"We need to stop the merchants of death," Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said.
He suggested conditioning EU aid to North African nations to them stopping migrants from setting off from their shores.
Italy has recorded a sharp increase in migrant boat arrivals since July.
Most vessels, organised by human traffickers, sail off from Libya, Tunisia or Egypt, carrying asylum seekers from Syria and the Horn of Africa.
Others, such as Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini and Italian Red Cross President Francesco Rocca, urged the EU to open "humanitarian corridors" allowing refugees to reach Europe safely and legally, without putting their lives in the hands of traffickers.
The Times of Malta reported the roughly 150 survivors from Friday's wreck were thought to be Syrians who'd each paid 4000 euros ($A5760) for the trip.
Two babies, an 11-year-old child and a woman were among the dead.
The migrants' boat was said to have capsized as those aboard tried to attract the attention of a passing Maltese aircraft.
The Italy Coast Guard also intervened between Thursday and Friday to help 85 migrants stranded on a dinghy about 80 nautical miles south of Lampedusa, and intercepted a boat with 183 migrants on board as it approached the port of the tiny island.
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