A 7-metre small boat sank last night in the Italian Sar area.
Forty-six migrants, including seven minors and 13 women, were rescued by soldiers of the CP319 patrol boat of the Coast Guard.
However, there would also be three missing, including the mother of a newborn.
Offshore searches are underway.
The castaways, originally from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Gambia, were landed just before half past midnight at the Favarolo pier in Lampedusa.
They reported that they left Sfax, Tunisia, at 9 pm last Friday and paid 2,000 dinars for the crossing.
There were 299 migrants, rescued while they were on board 6 different boats, who landed (including the 46 shipwrecked) during the night and until dawn in Lampedusa where yesterday there were 12 landings with a total of 611 people.
On the punts docked during the night were groups of 48 (3 women and 2 minors), 46 (13 women and 7 minors), 42 (10 women and 8 minors), 45 (6 women and 2 minors), 36 (9 women and 3 minors) and 82 (8 women).
The first 5 boats left from Sfax in Tunisia, while the last one from Sabratah in Libya.
All were taken to the hotspot in the Imbriacola district where at dawn there were 2,242 guests compared to just under 400 places available.
Structure that remains overcrowded despite the fact that in the last two days, with line ferries, ships and military planes, a thousand people are transferred every day.