People hate Katie Hopkins almost as much as they like Jeremy Clarkson

A petition calling on The Sun to sack Katie Hopkins has gained more than 150,000 supporters in just over two days.

The call was made after Hopkins wrote a piece in the best-selling national newspaper saying "gunships" should be used to halt "feral" refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa.

The piece claimed "Some of our towns are festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money”.

Change.org told i100.co.uk the petition to sack Hopkins was "one of the fastest-growing on the UK site this year" - although it is not quite as big as the call to reinstate Jeremy Clarkson after he was suspended from Top Gear, which gained more than 400,000 signatures in under 24 hours.

Izzy Saunders who started the petition said: "It's deeply depressing that Katie Hopkins is using such a powerful platform to spread poison about immigrants, but I started this petition because I believe most people in the UK disagree with these extreme views.

"Our response to the tragedy in the Mediterranean should be to send lifeboats, not gunboats."

On Sunday officials said as many as 700 people are feared to have died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, in one of the worst disasters seen in the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

More: Up to 700 feared dead after migrant boat sinks off Libya