These haunting pictures show the doomed boat that sank in the Mediterranean carrying up to 800 desperate migrants 1,000 feet down at the bottom of the sea.
Minesweepers using sonar equipment and an underwater robot identified a 70foot (25m) blue fishing boat at a depth of 375m, the Italian Navy said.
The vessel was discovered 85 miles north east of Libya, close to the site where the tragedy unfolded last month.
Up to 800 are feared to have drowned in the worst catastrophe ever seen in the Mediterranean.
Most, including all the women and young children, died after being locked below deck ‘like rats in a cage’ and only 24 bodies have been recovered since the tragedy off the coast of Libya on April 18.
The Italian Navy said that the images of the boat seen remotely ‘correlated with the fishing boat that sank on 18th April’.
The boat capsized after its Tunisian captain rammed a cargo ship during a botched maneuver as the merchant ship rescue operation, prosecutors allege.
The alleged captain has been accused of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck. Another man, a Syrian national is accused of human trafficking.
The discovery of the wreck comes as 600 migrants were reported to have been arrested in Libya as they attempted to set off in a fishing boat.
Britain is supporting Italian proposals to seize or destroy traffickers’ boats, which will be put to the UN on Monday.
The UK is working with France, Spain and Lithuania and Italy on a draft resolution that would give an EU maritime force the right to act in Libyan waters, if authorities there give their consent.
But the Red Cross spoke out against plans to destroy migrant boats.
Francesco Rocca, president of the Italian Red Cross, told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that instead of resorting to force, more legal avenues must be opened to allow asylum-seekers to reach Europe safely. ‘For us, bombing the boats is not the solution. The traffickers will find other routes.’
Despite the dangers of the crossing the migrants are continuing to surge across the Mediterranean, as traffickers in Libya take advantage of good weather.
Last weekend almost 6,000 were rescued attempting the crossing. Already this year migrants are arriving at a faster rate than last year’s record 170,000, inevitably on unseaworthy and overcrowded boats.
Italy’s refugee reception facilities are stretched to the limit with several northern Italian regions including the Alpine Vall’d’Aosta refusing to accommodate any more new arrivals.
Meanwhile around 40 migrants housed in a reception centre in northern Italy are refusing to leave, even after receiving their work permits, because they say they have nowhere to go.
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