Italy's coastguard said Thursday that it had found nine dead migrants, including a child, after their boat was shipwrecked southeast of Lampedusa but that 22 people were rescued.

The coastguard said it had been asked for help Wednesday by authorities in Malta, in whose search-and-rescue territory the shipwreck occurred, around 30 miles southeast of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

It dispatched a patrol boat to the site and "rescued 22 shipwrecked people and recovered nine lifeless people, including a child", the coastguard said in a statement.

Rough conditions, with waves up to 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) high, complicated the rescue operations, it said.

The migrants, suffering from "severely hypothermic conditions", were brought to Lampedusa.

A coastguard aircraft was also deployed to the area in hopes of finding missing migrants, the statement said.

It did not disclose how many people were believed to be missing.