A container ship docked overnight in the eastern Sicilian port city of Catania with 194 migrants on board. Also aboard the ship were the corpses of five migrants believed to have perished in a shipwreck off Libya last week.
The migrants who disembarked in Catania included two minors and 18 women, Italian coastguard said. Coastguard officers and volunteers from Catholic charity Caritas assisted the migrants and gave them breakfast, clothes and shoes.
A further 483 migrants were due to reach the Sicilian capital Palermo later on Tuesday after being picked up by the Italian navy. A Libyan and two Tunisians were arrested for allegedly smuggling 870 migrants who arrived by boat in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo on Monday.
Hundreds of migrants and have arrived in Catania in the last two weeks as a surge of migrant crossings in the Mediterranean continues amid warmer weather and calmer seas.
A million migrants, mainly from Africa and the Middle East are said to be waiting in Libya to attempt the perilous crossing to southern Europe.
Over 6,500 migrants arrived in Italy last weekend alone.
If the migrant crisis continues unabated, there could be 30,000 deaths at sea this year and Italy will have to handle 200,000 would be asylum-seekers landing on its soil, aid groups predict.
The United Nations refugee agency fears over 1,750 people have already lost their lives in the Mediterranean this year - 30 times more than in the same period of 2014.
EU leaders at a summit on 23 April pledged to expand is Triton border security mission's funding and assets and to crack down on smuggling networks.
