The news of a boat full of irregular immigrants that capsized off Malta, made the headlines in various countries. Alessandra Migliaccio in Rome reports for Bloomberg:

Italy's Coast Guard retrieved the bodies of three migrants after their boat capsized in international waters off Malta. Eight others are missing. An Italian fishing boat rescued 16 people after the vessel overturned, said Corrado Sigona, a Coast Guard officer in the Italian port of Siracusa. The Coast Guard was called to the scene shortly after the vessel was found at 5 a.m. local time today, and retrieved the bodies.

The survivors, found clinging to the overturned boat, are all men from Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, Sigona said. They had left the North African port of Tunis, capital of Tunisia, and were headed toward Italy to seek asylum, he added. Malta is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the Italian island of Sicily. Malta and Italy's islands are popular destinations for migrants seeking to enter the European Union illegally. Last year, Italy intercepted 207 boats near its coast carrying almost 22,000 migrants. Coast Guard and customs officials also discovered 70 corpses, Agence France-Presse said.

Other European countries face immigration pressure from Africans trying to reach the continent. Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last month wrote to the presidents of Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Senegal asking them to go beyond their obligations under international law and allow Spain to begin repatriating illegal immigrants from their countries. Zapatero acted after the Spanish authorities intercepted several thousand immigrants trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands.

The weather at the scene of today's capsize was 'excellent' and the vessel probably overturned "because there were too many people in it,'' Sigona said. The survivors, accompanied by medical staff, were being transferred to Malta, Sigona added.

More reports from: Australia's ABC News Online; South Africa's News24; Scotsman News; Irish Examiner; United Press International; Ansa Italia; Times of India; Russia's Pravda; Qatar's Gulf Times.

Update: 28 more immigrants rescued this morning

'Strangers in their midst': In another article in the international press, Mary Jordan of the Washington Post writes that Malta "that elegant, mainly Catholic Mediterranean speck of land below Sicily groans as flotillas of black African Muslims keep arriving.."