Coast guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said the rescue operation, involving seven ships, was still underway several hours after the capsizing.
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According to the Irish authorities, 367 people, including 12 women and 13 children, had been rescued.
Rescue ships including vessels from the Italian and Irish navies and humanitarian agency Medecins sans Frontiers (MSF) recovered 25 bodies after the boat sank off the Libyan coast on Wednesday and found no more overnight, a spokesman said.
“Boat carrying 600 capsized off Libya“.
The agency’s chief spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said on Twitter that “100 (migrants) were in the hull” of the fishing vessel when it capsized.
“An Italian (military) helicopter has dropped additional life rafts” into the sea, he added.
Since the water was warm, rescuers worked with hope of finding more survivors, even as dusk approached.
The capsized vessel reportedly left from the city of Zuwara in the north-west of Libya early this morning.
Tons of of migrants making an attempt to succeed in throughout the Mediterranean from Libya are feared to have drowned after their fishing boat capsized off the North African nation. Only 28 people, including two alleged smugglers, survived.
Prosecutors in Sicily said smugglers routinely pack unseaworthy boats far past capacity, with hundreds of migrants below deck.
Will Turner, on the MSF ship Phoenix, which was on its way to the scene, told Sky News that the boat had now sunk, adding: “We know that there’s dozens of people who have died, but we do not know the exact number”.
The global Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that it was receiving reports that there were a “significant number” of casualties.
“The challenge here is the sheer scale of it. trying to prioritise who to rescue first, how to conduct the rescue operation, how to deal with a kind of organised panic and control that”.
More than 2,000 migrants have died so far this year trying to cross the sea to reach Europe, confirming this as the deadliest route for migrants in search of a better life, the Switzerland-based worldwide Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
Fleeing war, persecution and poverty, the migrants travel overland for weeks or months from sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia to reach Libya.
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The fishing boat had set out from Zuwarah, close to the Tunisian border.
