Ragusa (Italy), April 14 (IANS/AKI): A suspected human trafficker from Guinea who allegedly tossed the body of a dead passenger to sharks circling a migrant boat in the southern Mediterranean has been arrested, police said on Tuesday.

The man faces charges of human trafficking and manslaughter in the horrific case in which the migrant allegedly died after inhaling petrol fumes when a fuel canister was spilt as the boat listed in rough seas.

Police arrested the suspected human trafficker when a motorised rubber dinghy with 110 migrants on board reached Pozzallo on Sicily's southern coast overnight amid a summer surge in migrant crossings.

Other passengers said the dead man's body was torn to shreds by the sharks, which had been following the boat as it crossed the Mediterranean to Italy from North Africa.

Italian coast guard recovered nine bodies and 144 survivors on Monday after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya, an official told AKI, adding that the rescue operation was going on.

More than 500 people drowned in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, a thirty-fold increase from the same period of 2014, the Italian office of the UN refugee agency UNHCR said.

Most of the migrants set sail from Libya and are sub-Saharan Africans, Eritreans, Syrians, Somalis and Ethiopians.