Rome - An Italian navy ship was set later Friday to bring to Sicily a group of 76 would-be immigrants rescued from a vessel on which the bodies of two dead people were also recovered.

The deaths added to this week's tragic toll involving migrants in the Mediterranean where over 230 people are feared to have drowned.

The Italian ship picked up the group, including 17 women, after Italian coastguard officials on Thursday night received a satellite telephone distress call from the vessel carrying the migrants.

According to those rescued, the dead - a man and a woman - succumbed from dire conditions on the overcrowded vessel which had apparently set sail from Libya.

The nationalities of the dead and survivors was not immediately clear.

On Thursday Libyan officials said they had called off a search for survivors whose boat capsized off the coast of Libya on Sunday.

International Organization for Migration (OIM) officials said about 100 bodies had been recovered.

Some 21 migrants were rescued from the vessel, while 357 who were found drifting on another boat were rescued by Italian authorities and towed back to the Libyan capital, Tripoli on Sunday.

Many of those rescued from the boat that sank have kidney problems after drinking large quantities of sea water, the IOM said.

According to Italian government figures, a total of 36,900 would- be immigrants arrived in Italy by sea in 2008, a 75-per-cent increase over the previous year. Of these some 31,000 landed on Lampedusa, an islet situated south of Sicily.

Italian officials say they hope to see a decrease in such hazardous sea-journeys in May when an agreement between Rome and Tripoli involving stepped up patrols of Libya's coastline, comes into effect. (dpa)