Italian police have arrested five migrants accused of murdering scores of fellow refugees when fighting broke out on a boat making the treacherous crossing to Europe.
Italian and Maltese naval crews discovered 30 bodies of passengers on Saturday who had apparently been overcome by heat and engine fumes after being locked in the hold of a boat carrying over 560 mostly-Syrian migrants, according to reports.
Police in the Sicilian port of Messina, where the survivors were brought, were said to believe a further 110 people had been thrown into the ocean by their fellow passengers on the horror crossing from Tunisia.
Survivors told police the grim details of how a journey to a better life turned into a nightmare for many on board.
They described what they witnessed on the boat as a massacre, police told media.
According to the witnesses, migrants locked in the hold panicked as air ran out, forced the door and stormed the bridge.
The boat began to founder and fighting erupted between two groups of passengers on the bridge - one that wanted to brave the high seas and continue the voyage and another that wanted to return to Tunisia.
Witnesses reportedly claimed that, in the chaos, many people were stabbed, while others were thrown overboard in a bid to keep the vessel afloat.
Messina's chief of police estimated that 50 of the migrants were thrown overboard, and about 60 were stabbed and then thrown into the sea.
The five men arrested were a 21-year-old Syrian, two Moroccans aged 21 and 25, a Palestinian of 25 and a Saudi aged 32.
Three of the men tried to escape, according to the Italian media, and had bus tickets for Milan in northern Italy in their pockets.
The three Tunisian traffickers, who apparently did nothing to stop the massacre, were also arrested on Monday.
The gruesome tale is the latest tragedy to emerge from the decks of a relentless barrage of migrant boats seeking to reach Europe.
In the past week, more than 1700 migrants were rescued in Italian territorial waters, the navy said, many of them women and children. In early July, more than 2000 were plucked from the sea during one weekend.
There has been a sharp rise in migrant landings in recent weeks because of the calm summer weather and growing lawlessness in Libya.
About 80,000 migrants are now believed to have landed in Italy so far this year - higher than the previous record of 63,000, set in 2011 at the height of the turmoil triggered by the Arab Spring.
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