Italy has shipped more than 2000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland, relieving pressure on a tiny island off Sicily which has been overwhelmed by a stream of boats full of arrivals from North African shores.
Lampedusa - a clear-watered fishing and tourist island with a population of 5000 - ran out of shelters days ago when migrant numbers peaked at over 6000, forcing many of the Tunisians and others to sleep in the open air on docksides and in fields.
Human rights advocacy group Amnesty International has added its voice to local concern, saying that migrants had been left to fend for themselves in "appalling" conditions.
On Thursday, soldiers, ordered in by the national government, joined local sanitation workers in ridding the island of piles of rubbish left by the departing migrants.
There was also concern about the minors among the migrants, which a Save the Children representative on the island, Filippo Ungaro, estimated to number about 350.
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Under international conventions, the minors cannot be deported and should be put into temporary foster homes while asylum paperwork is processed, Ungaro said.
The government, at a cabinet meeting on Thursday, authorised funding for unaccompanied minors so they could be placed in temporary homes.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi, pressured by anti-immigrant coalition allies, promised while touring the island on Wednesday that all of the migrants would be either deported to Tunisia or transferred to mainland detention centres within two to three days.
Most of the arrivals are Tunisians who fled unrest in their homeland in the hope of finding family members or jobs in France.
Berlusconi said on Thursday that Tunisia should have stopped the boats from setting out from its waters and planned to travel on Monday to Tunis to raise the issue in person, his office said.
