EU foreign ministers have promised to do more to stop migrant deaths in the Mediterranean by increasing rescues and catching traffickers after a weekend tragedy that killed up to 700 people off the Libyan coast.

Many European governments have long been reluctant to fund rescue operations in the Mediterranean for fear of encouraging more people to make the crossing in search of a better life in Europe, but they now face outrage over the refugee deaths.

"What's at stake is the reputation of the EU," Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said as he arrived for a meeting with EU peers in Luxembourg.

"We can't have a European emergency and an Italian answer."

The foreign ministers held a minute of silence at the start of their meeting and were later joined by interior ministers later for an emergency discussion of the migration crisis.

The pledge of more action came as the bodies of 24 victims of what is believed to be the Mediterranean's worst migrant tragedy were brought ashore to Malta.

Italian coastguard ship Gregoretti dropped off the bodies before continuing on to Sicily with 28 survivors of the fishing boat that capsized near the Libyan coast.

It is believed more than 900 migrants were on the smugglers' boat - many locked in the hold. The dead will be buried in Malta.

One survivor who has already been brought to the Sicilian city of Catania has told prosecutors there were 950 people on board the ship when it sank.

Northern EU countries have so far largely left rescue operations to southern states such as Italy. In the week prior to the weekend's tragedy, the Italian coastguard rescued almost 8,000 migrants in the Mediterranean, according to the European Commission, the EU's executive.

At least 3,500 people, many of them fleeing poverty and fighting in Africa, died trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2014, according to the UN.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, also an Italian, said she was determined to build a "common sense of responsibility" to tackle the crisis and that EU leaders are considering an emergency summit in Brussels this week.

It was the EU's "moral duty to concentrate our responsibility as Europeans to prevent these kind of tragedies from happening again and again," Ms Mogherini said.

"We must build a common sense of European responsibility ... knowing that there is no easy solution, no magic solution."

Solutions aired by ministers on their way into the Luxembourg conference centre included a call by Britain to crack down on smugglers in North Africa who charge thousands of dollars to load people onto rubber dinghies and fishing boats.

Austria said it supported an Italian proposal to set up camps in the Middle East and Africa where people can request asylum on site without having to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

France's Europe Minister Harlem Desir said the EU's Triton border protection operation, which replaced a more comprehensive Italian search-and-rescue operation dubbed Mare Nostrum last year, was not enough and its scope was too limited.

Meanwhile, a wooden sailing boat carrying dozens of immigrants has run aground off the coast of the Greek island of Rhodes and at least three people have drowned.

More than 90 people were rescued and 30 of those taken to hospital. The boat was totally wrecked, the Greek coastguard said.