500 migrants on boat in distress - Alarm Phone

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 10 - Roughly 500 refugees and migrants are on a boat in distress in the Italian search and rescue (SAR) zone, Alarm Phone tweeted Friday.
    The Mediterranean sea rescue hotline said it had alerted the authorities.
    "No time to lose: send help immediately," said Alarm Phone.
    The boat reportedly departed from Libya.
    "The civil rescue telephone Alarm Phone and the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans have been reporting since early this morning a situation of serious danger for 500 people, including dozens of women and children, who are on board a fishing boat off Sicily in the Ionian Sea," the Green-Left Alliance deputy whip Marco Grimaldi told the Lower House on Friday.
    "All authorities have been notified, but the boat is already taking in water," he continued, adding that the National Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (M.R.C.C.) in Rome had told him Coast Guard boats would be deployed.
    "We now hope that all the people on the boat will be rescued," he concluded. (ANSA).