UNHCR estimated the boat, which capsized in the Mediterranean, was packed with some 450 people.

The bodies of 162 people had been pulled from the waters off the Egyptian coast on Friday, three days after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsised in the Mediterranean while attempting to head to Europe.

Wahdan el-Sayyed, the spokesman of the Nile Delta province of Beheira, provided the latest figures and said the search operation was ongoing.

Dozens more are feared dead, Mohammed Sultan, the governor of Beheira, said earlier. Many of them are believed to be children and women who were unable to swim away when the boat sank.

An AP reporter near the Nile Delta city of Rosetta saw between 20 to 30 bodies brought in by fishing boats early Friday morning and delivered to a group of waiting ambulances at the coast guard pier.

Pictures posted on social networks showed dozens of bodies lined up in black plastic bags, and others floating near wooden fishing boats. Authorities have struggled to give accurate figures for the number of people on board the capsized vessel. The boat was located nearly 12 km from the Nile Delta port city of Rosetta, when it sank.

It had waited at sea for many hours perhaps days for smaller wooden boats carrying migrants to arrive from different points along the Egyptian coastline. Survivors said overcrowding caused the boat to capsize.

The head of the local council in the area, Ali Abdel-Sattar, said the currents have carried the bodies of the victims many kilometres away from the site of the sinking.