At least 10 North African migrants died on Wednesday in the frigid Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said, but 121 could be rescued after their rubber boat overturned in the Strait of Sicily, CBS News reported.

The incident brings the total number migrants saved over the past 24 hours to 941, according to numbers from the Corps of the Port Captaincies - as the country's coast guard is officially known. During the same time frame, its forces were involved in seven separate rescue operations. At times, they were assisted by three merchant ships.

The refugees were of Syrian, Palestinian, Tunisian, Libyan and sub-Saharan descent, and among them were more than 30 children and 50 women, one of them pregnant. They were traveling aboard two motorized dinghies and two larger vessels, CBS News detailed.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that in 2014, almost 218,000 individuals tried to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. The attempt cost some 3,500 of them their lives, turning the waters into the world's most lethal sea crossing for migrants.

An estimated 8,000 migrants had already sailed this year before Tuesday's new arrivals, the Los Angeles Times detailed. That marks a 78 percent increase compared with the number of refugees during the same period last year; 300 are believed to already have died in 2015.

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano once again called on the European Union to do more to help his country handle the massive immigration flow, Reuters noted. Rome ended its large-scale search-and-rescue mission "Mare Nostrum" last year, citing its high costs and saying it led people to attempt the treacherous journey.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy's anti-immigration Northern League renewed that argument on Wednesday when he accused Rome and Brussels of "having blood on their hands" by encouraging migrants through rescue efforts.

"Mare Nostrum" has been replaced by "Triton," a European Union border-control mission that lacks a specific rescue mandate, resulting in fewer ships and a much smaller search area of close to the Italian coast, Reuters detailed.

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