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Migrants on the Ezadeen arrive at Corigliano harbour in Italy. Photo: AFP

Brussels: The European Union has vowed to fight people smugglers' new tactic of abandoning "ghost ships" full of migrants off European coasts.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it was following closely the events surrounding the crewless Ezadeen merchant ship, which was drifting toward Italy's southern shores carrying 450 migrants when Italian sailors took control of it on Friday.

It was the second time in three days Italian authorities found themselves racing to rescue hundreds of migrants from an ageing freighter that traffickers had pointed towards Italy and abandoned, leaving the ship to plow through wintry seas at top speed with no one at the helm, heading for the coastline.

The ship, which traffickers pointed towards Italy, then abandoned, was carrying 450 people. Photo: AFP

Rescuers were able to board the ship only after it ran out of fuel and stopped, and by afternoon they were towing it to shore. But the episode was confirmation traffickers had hit on a new tactic to extract ever greater profits from human misery while eluding apprehension.

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"When we called the ship to ask about its status, a migrant woman responded, saying, 'We are alone, and we have no one to help us'," said Commander Filippo Marini, an Italian Coast Guard spokesman.

Ezadeen, a 49-year-old livestock carrier sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone, which departed from a Turkish port, had been left on autopilot, Marini said. Paramedics reported that the migrants, most of whom were believed to be Syrian, were in good health, he added.

Until recently, migrants going to Italy by sea arrived primarily in smaller boats that sailed north from North Africa. The shift to steel-hulled cargo ships approaching from the east denoted a new strategy, an Italian naval official said, and traffickers were secure in the knowledge that no one was going to allow a boat to crash on Italian or Greek shores.

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EU to fight new people smuggler tactic of 'ghost ships'