The International Organization for Migration said Monday it had received a distress call from a sinking boat in the Mediterranean carrying more than 300 people, with at least 20 people reported dead.

IOM's Rome office said it had received a call for help from one of three boats floating near each other in international waters.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) called Monday for the immediate restoration of an Italian navy search-and-rescue operation after more than 700 people were feared to have drowned when an overcrowded boat capsized off Libya.

IOM chief William Lacy Swing also urged other European countries to support the operation, Mare Nostrum, which was stopped last year due to high operating costs.

European Union ministers headed into crisis talks Monday under pressure to act over people smuggling as Italian and Maltese authorities grappled with the grim aftermath of the Mediterranean's deadliest migrant disaster.

More than 700 people are feared dead following Sunday's capsize off Libya of a fishing boat that had been crammed with migrants trying to reach Europe. One survivor has told Italian authorities that there were as many as 950 people on board and that some of them had been locked below deck by the smugglers.

The United States on Sunday condemned the "brutal mass murder" of 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya following a video released by Islamic State militants purportedly showing their execution.

The 29-minute IS video appears to show militants holding two groups of captives, described in text captions as "followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church".

More than 30 percent of young Arabs are jobless because of unrest in many Arab nations and not enough investment, a top labor official said on Sunday.

"The unemployment rate among Arab youth until the age of 30 years exceeds 30 percent," the director general of the Arab Labor Organization Ahmad Mohammed Luqman told AFP.

The U.N. envoy for Libya said on Sunday that rival factions in the strife-torn North African country have reached a draft accord which is "very close to a final agreement."

Bernardino Leon also told reporters in the Moroccan resort of Skhirat at the end of the latest round of negotiations between the factions that preparations were under way for armed groups to hold direct talks.

Arab military chiefs will meet this week in Cairo to discuss the forming of a joint military force to fight the region's growing extremist threat, an Arab League official said Sunday.

After Arab League leaders agreed to create such a force at a March summit in Egypt, army chiefs from member states will hold talks on Wednesday on details of how the force will be created, its role and its financing, a League source told AFP.

The Islamic State group on Sunday released a video purportedly showing the execution of some 30 Ethiopian Christians captured in Libya.

Addis Ababa condemned the reported killings and said its embassy in Egypt was trying to verify the video to ascertain if those murdered were indeed Ethiopians.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the Church of England leader, offered his condolences to Egyptian officials Sunday over the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians by jihadists in Libya.

The Copts, 20 of them Egyptian, had traveled to Libya for work. They were kidnapped and executed by Islamic State militants in February, provoking Egyptian air strikes on IS targets in the strife-torn country.

With conflicts raging across the Middle East, the U.S. is seeking to reassure its Gulf allies that it has a regional strategy which will be bolstered, not shredded, by any Iran nuclear deal.

The U.S. administration appears increasingly caught in a game of whack-a-mole as it confronts a series of complex challenges, with Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen just the latest complication in a regional tinderbox pitting Sunnis against Shiites, and even Sunni against Sunni.