ROME: At least 60 Egyptian migrants were intercepted Tuesday on the Italian island of Sicily, the ANSA news agency reported, as the country deals with a wave of migrants from Tunisia.
Thirty-two of the migrants were found while trying to disembark from a ship and 31 were found on land, the agency reported.
In Geneva, UN refugee agency UNHCR said some 90 migrants claiming to be from Egypt had disembarked from two boats in Sicily on Tuesday.
"We know that two boats with migrants arrived today in Sicily. We know that the passengers are saying they are Egyptians, but we can’t confirm it," UNHCR spokeswoman Sybella Wilkes told AFP.
"It’s a very long way to go to Sicily. We don’t know the routes they took," she added. "There was an estimate of 60 persons in one boat and 30 in the other."
The past week has seen a sharp spike in migrants attempting to make it into the European Union from Tunisia, with some 5,000 brought to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa after being intercepted by coast guards.
The wave of immigration comes about a month after a revolution in Tunisia that unseated a 23-year regime and just days after another toppled a 30-year regime in Egypt, leaving both countries wracked by social and economic tensions.
European Union border agency Frontex on Tuesday accepted an Italian request to help it cope with the migrants.
