Refugees head for Europe from Tunisia and Libya

More than 6,000 migrants from North Africa are likely to flood into Europe after Silvio Berlusconi pledged to remove them from a tiny Italian island that has been overwhelmed with an influx of refugees.

Most of the 18,000 migrants who have landed on Lampedusa since the beginning of the year are Tunisian, but Italy fears a far bigger exodus if the situation in Libya deteriorates further.

An Italian assault ship and five ferries will remove the migrants from the island, a speck of land which lies closer to Tunisia than Italy, within the next two days.

They will be taken to tented camps and converted barracks on the Italian mainland but it is expected that most will escape and head for other countries, including France.

Migrants who were transferred to the camps in the past few days were filmed and photographed vaulting wire fences, evading security guards.

Italy faced a diplomatic confrontation with France after an estimated 3,500 Tunisians, most of whom had arrived in Europe via Lampedusa and then escaped from detention centres in recent weeks, massed at the Franco-Italian border yesterday, demanding to be allowed in.

Franco Frattini, Italy's foreign minister, accused Paris of showing "a grave lack of solidarity" in refusing to permit the Tunisians to enter French territory from the border town of Ventimiglia.

Just this week, a group of Eritreans, Somalis and Ethiopians who had been living and working in Libya reached the wind-swept island, which in summer is a popular holiday destination for Italians.

Ministers have warned of a "biblical exodus", saying Italy cannot handle the crisis alone and calling for urgent EU assistance.

"These are not just economic migrants and we continue to ask Europe to take action," Mr Frattini said, adding that promises for "very limited European funds" were not enough.

But the EU said it had already done a great deal to help. "We have made around 18 million euros (25 million dollars) available to Italy in 2010-2011 for repatriations, on top of 25 million euros allocated to all member states for emergency measures," a spokesman said.

Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, visited Lampedusa yesterday for the first time since the immigration crisis started in January, vowing that Italian ships would evacuate the migrants "within 48 to 60 hours".

He was cheered by islanders, who were initially welcoming and sympathetic but have grown increasingly hostile to the North African arrivals.

Mr Berlusconi joked that he would propose Lampedusa as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Peace.

He also said he had bought on the internet a villa on Lampedusa in order to show solidarity with its 5,500 inhabitants and boost the island's flagging tourism sector.

"I asked myself how to assure the people of Lampedusa that all the promises that I've made will be kept. And I thought to myself, OK, I need to become an islander too. Last night I went on the internet and I found a villa, called Two Palms, and I bought it."

The immigrants are mainly young men, many of whom have been sleeping in the open air on the dock for days, cooped up in pens marked with ropes or dustbins.

"I left Tunisia because I didn't have any work. I don't know what will happen today and I'm afraid, very afraid. No one knows anything and they are not telling us anything," Bechir, a 21-year old Tunisian, said. "I just want to join my family in France." With only three chemical lavatories, little access to water for washing and growing tensions between locals and immigrants, aid organisations and charities have denounced the government for poor management of the crisis.

"It's not possible in the long term to leave 5,000 inhabitants living alongside 6,000 immigrants in such conditions," Laura Boldrini from the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR said.

"The situation is very tense. We cannot lose any more time," she said.