One large boat, carrying 66 migrants was intercepted overnight Monday/Tuesday (14-15/2) close to Pozzallo in south-east Sicily. Ten among them are thought to be minors. Another boat carrying 30 migrants, 26 of them minors, landed nearby in Ragusa also on Tuesday.
It is unclear where their boats departed from though migrants are known to leave from and around Dumyatt (Dumietta), east of Alexandria.
An IOM team in Sicily will be meeting the minors today to define both their physical and protection needs as well as to provide legal information on their situation and next steps.
Although there has been much focus on Tunisian migrants arriving by sea on the Italian island of Lampedusa following recent events in their country, it is not uncommon for small numbers of Egyptian irregular migrants to occasionally travel by boat to south east Sicily.
Meanwhile, Tunisian migrants who had arrived on Lampedusa at the weekend are gradually being relocated to other migrant reception centres in Italy.
The centre which is meant to host a maximum of 800 people, has for the past few days been hosting about 2,000 migrants.
In a bid to help relieve the overcrowding, 200 of the migrants were transferred from Lampedusa to Foggia on Tuesday.
IOM teams on Lampedusa and in six reception centres in Puglia in southern Italy working with partners UNHCR and Save the Children, are providing general legal information to the migrants, the majority of whom are young men who say they have left Tunisia in order to find work. However, some of the Tunisian migrants have told IOM they left because they were afraid, citing insecurity and danger.
