Italy Suspends Search for Shipwreck Victims Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images Shipwreck Survivors Saved Near Sicily: The Italian Coast Guard released video showing rescued migrants being helped to shore. On Thursday, a boat carrying 500 migrants sank just half a mile from the Sicilian coast. Having floated for at least two days in the choppy Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe, a rickety trawler overstuffed with African migrants fleeing war and poverty was nearing a Sicilian island, not even a quarter-mile away. But it was still dark and no one had yet spotted them. So to signal their position, someone set a match to a blanket. About 500 people were said to be on a boat bound for Italy. But rather than sending a signal, the fire brought tragedy when flames from the burning blanket ignited gasoline. Nearly 500 people are estimated to have been on board - including children - and the blaze created a panic that capsized the boat. So close to reaching land, the migrants were now tossed into the sea. Many could not swim. The accident, which occurred before dawn on Thursday within easy eyesight of the island of Lampedusa, is one of the worst in recent memory in the Mediterranean: at least 111 people were reported dead, with up to 250 still missing. At least 150 others survived. On Friday, divers suspended the search for bodies because of high seas in the waters around Lampedusa. It was unclear when search operations would resume. The government declared Friday a national day of mourning. "Today is a day of tears," Pope Francis, who went to Lampedusa earlier this year to call attention to the suffering of migrants, said Friday during a visit to Assisi. The grisly deaths again underscored the dangerous, desperate efforts by many migrants from Africa and the Middle East to reach Europe by sea, while also renewing criticism of European immigration policy. Immigration is a politically volatile issue in Europe, so much so that Greece recently completed a nearly eight-mile fence blocking its border with Turkey, an attempt to shut down a major land migration route. But some experts say that making it harder to slip into Europe by land has only pushed many migrants to try the more perilous route by sea. With conflicts raging in the Middle East and Africa, the number of asylum seekers and migrants arriving by boat in Spain and Italy has spiked this year. According to statistics released by Save the Children, 21,780 migrants reached Italy during the first nine months of this year, including 4,000 children. Lampedusa, an Italian island barely 70 miles from northern Africa, has become a gateway to Europe for migrants. In some seasons, boats filled with migrants and asylum seekers arrive almost daily. For Italy, the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean has become an enormous operational and humanitarian challenge. Italian Coast Guard boats are sent almost daily on dangerous rescue missions. Migrants assume huge risks to reach Europe and pay thousands of dollars to smugglers and middlemen, often in Turkey, Egypt and Libya. The smugglers load people onto a large boat for a trip into Italian waters. There, the migrants are usually transferred to smaller boats, some barely seaworthy, and left to float in the current. Then the smugglers flee back to Africa. It was unclear if the migrants in Thursday's accident were delivered by smugglers and then transferred to a smaller boat, or if they made the entire journey from Libya in the same trawler. It did seem clear, though, that they were completely unprepared. "Normally, these boats have a satellite phone, or someone on board will call a relative in Italy who alerts the authorities," said Veronica Lentini, who works with the International Organization for Migration in Lampedusa, and spoke with several survivors. But in this case, no one advised anyone. Survivors told Ms. Lentini that their ship had traveled from Libya and was a short distance from a tiny sister island of Lampedusa when the engine broke down. Soon, the ship began to take on water, and the fire was started to attract attention. But gas from the broken engine was ignited by the flames, and terrified passengers raced away from the explosion, to one side of the vessel, causing it to capsize. Lillian Pizzi, a psychologist working with migrant families on Lampedusa, said the survivors were in a state of shock. "They're exhausted and they're finding it difficult to explain exactly what happened," said Ms. Pizzi, who works for Terre des Hommes, a nonprofit group. She added: "It is something that happens all too often. It has to be read politically. This is not an accident at sea. It is something else. Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Siracusa, Sicily.