"This tragedy pains us deeply and calls on our conscience to act to stop such dangerous crossings and find concrete responses to the migration issue," Piantedosi told a parliamentary hearing.

"It is clear that this can only be done with decisive action by the EU and strong synergy with the countries of transit.

"We must prevent those fleeing wars entrusting themselves to unscrupulous human traffickers.

"Responsible EU policies of solidarity are needed.”

In response to Piantedosi's comments, Vatican daily l'Osservatore Romano said that migrants who leave their home countries often have no alternative than to put their own, and their kids', lives at risk with perilous crossings.

"Those who leave their country do so because they don't have alternatives, because their very lives are at risk," an editorial titled The Backwards March of Human Rights, said.

Echoing UN chief Antonio Guterrese, the pope's daily denounced "indifference towards the rights of migrants who are seeking a better world and find, instead, death at sea".

It said "in their case, as Pope Francis often repeats, the right not to have to migrate is violated, or having in their homelands conditions of peace and social and economic security, too often put at risk by wars, conflicts and the consequences of climate change".

Piantedosi also said the government's new decree regulating the activities of NGO-run search-and-rescue ships had nothing to do with the disaster.

Under the decree, NGO-run ships must immediately request the authorities assign them a port of safety after making a rescue, rather than staying at sea to help other people.

They risk big fines and the impoundment of the ships if they fail to comply.

The government has also started to allocate ports of safety to NGO ships that are some distance from their position after making the rescues.

"The decree does not aim in any way to impede rescues, but to made them take place in an ordered way consistent with international law," he said.

"I reiterate that the new measures do not introduce any bans on rescue operations".

ANSA