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Human traffickers fired shots at coastguards as they raced to rescue 400 migrants after their boat capsized.

Dozens of children are among those feared drowned off Libya after paying the smugglers up to £10,000 each to reach Italy.

One migrant who died on the trafficker’s boat had his body thrown overboard, it was claimed by survivors.

Italian coastguards saved 144 of the 550 people thought to have been on board.

Only nine bodies have been recovered, with no sign of any more survivors.

Save the Children said some survivors were “young men, probably minors.”

Spokesman Michele Prosperi said the migration season had barely started and “ when the weather improves, we may have many more arrivals.”

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Laurens Jolles said a better response was needed for rescue efforts.

Last year than 170,000 migrants crossed the ­Mediterranean to Italy and as many as 3,500 died.

The EU’s Frontex border agency said the people smugglers had fired shots in the air to warn the coastguard vessel and an Icelandic rescue ship tried to reach 250 migrants on an overloaded tugboat on Monday.

But after most of the migrants were rescued from the sea, the traffickers drove their speedboat towards the rescuers firing shots to retrieve the now empty boat.

The coastguard vessel had already been carrying 342 migrants from a previous rescue.

EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told the European parliament: “ The unprecedented influx of migrants at our border and, in particular refugees, is unfortunately the new norm and we will need to adjust our responses accordingly."