A total of 66 Tunisians including women and children arrived in the western Sicilian port of Trapani on Friday after they were picked up by two Italian coastguard boats overnight off the island of Pantelleria, port officials said.
The migrants allegedly refused to be rescued by Tunisian coastguard, who alerted Italy, the Giornale di Sicilia daily reported on its website.
Tunisians and Eritreans accounted for over a third of all migrants crossing from North Africa to Italy this year, the European Union's border and coastguard agency Frontex said on Wednesday.
The number of migrants arriving in Italy via the Central Mediterranean route in June fell to about 3,000, down 87 percent from June 2017, according to Frontex.
The total number of migrants detected on this route in the first half of the year fell to around 16,100, down 81 percent from the same period last year, Frontex said.
Italian government measures curbing the activities of NGO rescue ships in the Mediterranean including a stringent code of conduct and a ban in June on their entry to Italian ports are among the reasons for the sharp fall in boat migrants.
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