Rise in number of Tunisia migrants reaching Italy

More boats carrying Tunisian migrants reached a tiny southern Italian island on Monday, part of a steady stream this year from the economically struggling North African country that is sorely testing Italy's small town mayors' ability to safely quarantine them amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tunisian migrants are now the biggest single national group reaching Italy by sea, and in a sign of concern Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese flew to Tunis on Monday for a meeting with her Tunisian counterpart.

Hours earlier, two vessels carrying a total 18 Tunisians arrived at Lampedusa, a tourist destination about 100 kilometres (62 miles) from Tunisia and 200 kilometres (124 miles) from Sicily.

One held 11 people, including one man carrying a poodle dog on a leash, Italy's ANSA news agency said.

It said their boat was intercepted by the Italian coast guard, which transferred them to a rubber dinghy to take them ashore.

The second boat reached a reef near a popular Lampedusa swimming beach, where an Italian border police boat spotted the seven occupants just as they set foot on land, ANSA said.

In the first six months of this year, 9,725 migrants - including some 1,500 Tunisians - have reached Italy by sea, according to UN refugee agency figures, compared to 11,471 in all of 2019.

That's a fraction of the nearly 120,000 people rescued at sea from Libyan-based traffickers' flimsy boats and brought to Italy in 2017, or the more than 181,000 who arrived in the peak year, 2016.