Lampedusa island
© STR, AFP/Getty ImagesPicture taken 10 March 2004 shows an aerial view of Italy's Lampedusa island. Italian coast guards found 25 dead bodies in the hold of a refugee boat with 271 people crammed on board that arrived on the southern island of Lampedusa on Monday, local port authorities said. Thousands of migrants try to enter Italy and other EU nations each year via the Italian island.

Twenty-five men were apparently asphyxiated by motor fumes and died in a small boat crammed full of African migrants which arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, port authorities said.

The boat arrived after a three-day voyage from Libya carrying 296 people from sub-Saharan Africa, including 36 women and 21 children, the latest in a wave of arrivals since a western alliance began a military campaign to oust Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi earlier this year.

"Twenty-five bodies were found on board a boat from Libya; the others appear to be fine, they are now undergoing checks," said Antonio Morana, the commanding officer at Lampedusa port.

Hundreds of people have drowned attempting the dangerous crossing from North Africa to Lampedusa, a tiny island off the southern coast of Sicily, as the fighting in Libya has brought down previously strict border controls.

The latest victims were squeezed into the hold of the vessel which arrived on Monday and were already dead when it pulled into harbor with the aid of coast guard vessels, who came to the boat's rescue some 35 miles offshore, authorities said.

They said others on the boat said the men had died from asphyxiation but a formal cause of death had still to be established. Some people on the boat had also said another man had died on the voyage and his body dropped overboard.

Local prosecutors have opened an investigation to see whether any criminal responsibility can be established under laws against aiding clandestine immigration.

Lampedusa, a tiny island which normally lives from tourism and fishing, has found itself on the front line of a growing immigration crisis as tens of thousands have arrived from Tunisia and Libya since the beginning of the year.

The U.N. refugee agency has said one in 10 migrants fleeing conflict in Libya by sea is likely to drown or die from hunger or exhaustion in appalling conditions during the crossing.