A total of 156 migrants disembarked on Thursday (August 14) on the Italian island of Lampedusa following a double shipwreck the previous day off the island. The three boats they had been travelling on were rescued by the Coast Guard over the night.

On the first boat rescued were 62 people of Bangladeshi and Egyptian origins who said they had left from Khoms in Libya. Two of them were taken to a clinic: one due to lipothymia and the other for hypothermia, according to local authorities.

On the second boat there were 23 people, including six women, hailing from Ethiopia, Somalia and Mali. Among them were 13 cases of scabies, one injury from being beaten, and another eye injury. They had also left from Sabratha in Libya.

The third boat had 71 Bangladeshi and Egyptian nationals onboard, with 21 cases of scabies, 2 migrants with asthma, and one with a suspected foot fracture. They had also left from Khoms in Libya.

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Search for the missing resumes after Wednesday's double shipwreck

The search for those still missing from a double shipwreck 14 miles off Lampedusa resumed Thursday at dawn. A total of 23 corpses were in the morgue in the largest of the Pelagie Islands on Thursday morning.

However, the number of ascertained deaths -- according to security forces on Wednesday -- were 27.

Among them were a three-year-old female child and three adolescents.

An estimated between 20 and 40 people are still missing, according to calculations made on the basis of the accounts given by survivors, who said that on board the two vessels that sank were between 90 and 100 persons.

A total of 60 people who survived were taken to the Lampedusa hotspot.

"Of the 58 survivors taken in to the hotspot yesterday, 21 are minors. They spent a calm night and are in good condition. Two of the sixty," said Imad Dalil, director of the facilities, on Thursday, "were taken by a rescue helicopter to a Sicilian hospital."

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Survivors recount ordeal but what exactly happened is unclear

Red Cross staff have begun speaking to the survivors in the hotspot, divided on linguistic lines. First the Pakistani nationals were spoken to, then Egyptians and Sudanese and then Somalis. Their accounts will help to reconstruct what happened in detail before and during the shipwreck of the two vessels, and help security forces collect the names of the victims and those missing.

The Agrigento prosecutor's office has opened a negligent shipwreck investigation, but what exactly happened is not yet clear. What is known is that, on Wednesday, around noon, one of the two partially-sunken boats was sighted by a helicopter of the Italian Financial Police and that the alarm was sent out at that point.

From Lampedusa, patrol boats from the Coast Guard, Financial Police and Frontex were sent.

The two vessels, according to the accounts of some of the survivors, departed on Tuesday evening from Libya's Zawiya and then passed for unclear reasons by Tripoli.

One of the two, during the journey, began to take on water and then capsized. Some migrants managed to get onto the other boat, which was already overcrowded, but many reportedly fell into the water. Shortly afterwards, the second boat also capsized due to overcrowding.

The first corpses were recovered at sea as soon as they were found. On Wednesday, rescue workers managed to recover others, including two still inside the shipwrecked vessels.

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