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Eight suspected human traffickers thought to have forced migrants to stay in the hold of a fishing boat in the Mediterranean, have been arrested by police in Catania, Sicily.

They are accused of killing 49 migrants last weekend as the fishing boat was making its way to Italy from north Africa. The 49 are said to have suffocated on engine fumes.

Preliminary police reports say that some of the traffickers kicked the heads of the migrants, when they tried to climb out of the hold, as the air became unbreathable.

This was the third mass fatality in the Mediterranean this month. Last week, up to 50 migrants were unaccounted for, when their rubber dinghy sank, a few days after some 200 were presumed dead, when their boat capsized off Libya.