TUNIS: Rescuers have retrieved the bodies of 27 migrants whose boats sank in the Mediterranean as the European Union offered to double its aid to Tunisia's poorest regions.
Many Europeans are worried about an influx of north African immigrants following uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Thousands have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, near Tunisia.
Italy has shipped more than 2000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland, relieving pressure on the island off Sicily, which has been overwhelmed by a stream of boats from Africa.
The Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who is under pressure from anti-immigrant coalition allies, toured the island on Wednesday and promised that all of the migrants would be deported or transferred to the mainland within three days.
Tunisia's state news agency, TAP, said the 27 people whose bodies were found by Tunisian rescuers this week had sought to leave Sfax in Tunisia in two boats.
The boats hit rough weather and their crew failed to signal to rescuers when they began to sink.
The migrants were aged from 19 to 43, TAP reported, citing the Interior Ministry. It was unclear how many people survived.
When Tunisia's hard-line president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ,was ousted in a popular uprising two months ago, it marked the end of a police state that kept the borders more tightly controlled.
The EU's enlargement chief, Stefan Fule, said in Tunis on Thursday that the bloc was ready to double its aid for development in Tunisia from €160 million ($219 million) to €320 million over the next two years.
The aid is aimed at encouraging civil society in a country that was under one-party rule for half a century - and at promoting economic development in the poorer regions of central and southern Tunisia, away from the coastal regions that are popular with European tourists.
Mr Fule and the EU Internal Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, visited the Tunisian-Libyan border, where camps shelter refugees who have fled fighting in Libya.
Associated Press
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