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 Coastguards managed to take control of the vessel, the Sierra
Leone-flagged Ezadeen, after landing on it by helicopter, a
statement said. Facing difficult weather conditions, they are trying
to take the vessel to an Italian port.
The cargo ship had been drifting powerless after running out of fuel
about 40 miles from Italy's southern coast with as many as 450
people onboard. The ship was built almost 50 years ago to carry
livestock, a Website tracking maritime movements said.
"We know that it left from a Turkish port and was abandoned by its
crew," coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini told SkyTG24 television.
"When we hailed the ship to ask about its status, a migrant woman
responded, saying, 'We are alone and we have no one to help us.'"
It had been put on a collision course for the Italian coast before
running out of fuel, he said.
 The nationality of the migrants was not yet known, a coastguard
spokesman said, but there are women and children on board. It is the
third such migrant ship in the past two weeks as smugglers turn to
abandoning old ships in a shift in tactics.
On Wednesday, about 800 migrants, mostly Syrian refugees, arrived in
Italy after they were apparently abandoned by their ship's crew and
set on a crash course for the Italian coast. The coastguard also
boarded that vessel and took over navigation.
Two weeks ago, the Italian navy went to the aid of an abandoned
cargo ship carrying 850 migrants, diembarking them at a port in
Sicily.
Civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya swelled the number of people
crossing the Mediterranean last year. Many of them paid smugglers
$1,000-$2,000 to travel.
The United Nations refugee agency says 160,000 seaborne migrants
arrived in Italy by November 2014 and a further 40,000 in Greece.
Thousands more have died attempting the journey.
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Smugglers have changed tactics because Italy has ended its Mare
Nostrum maritime search and rescue mission, which makes a crossing
in a small boat more risky, and due to increased fighting in Libya,
Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, told
Reuters.
"We have seen increasing use of old cargo ships ready to be
dismantled (to smuggle migrants) over the past two months," she
said. "The usually don't even have any electronic equipment on
board."
The cargo ships are usually carrying mostly Syrian refugees, she
said, but also others, including some fleeing fighting in Iraq.
Smugglers set autopilot course in international waters and jump onto
a smaller vessel to escape, she said.
Italy discontinued Mare Nostrum partly due to public concern over
the 114-million-euro ($137 million) bill the mission racked up in
its first year. Human rights groups warned that closing the mission
would endanger more lives.
(Reporting by Steve Scherer, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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