ROME, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Three Tunisian nationals were arrested in Italy on suspicion of being migrant traffickers, local media reported on Monday.
Aged 32, 24, and 19, the three men were brought to jail in Ragusa, Sicily, on charge of favoring irregular immigration, according to AGI news agency.
They had reached the Sicilian port of Pozzallo on Saturday on board of a rescue ship of Italy's finance police operating within EU new border control mission Themis in the Mediterranean.
Overall, some 86 people were saved in that operation, and all of them were believed to have started their journey towards Europe from the coasts of Tunisia.
Each of them would have paid some 1,500 euros (about 1,860 U.S. dollars) for the Mediterranean crossing, AGI also reported citing testimonies of the migrants.
The three suspects arrested would have been directly linked to the ring managing the trafficking in Tunisia, police in Sicily said.
In a separate episode early on Monday, a Nigerian woman gave birth to a baby on board of a coast guard ship, after being rescued along with other migrants and asylum-seekers.
Shortly after the birth, the woman and her baby were evacuated on board of a patrol vessel, and immediately transferred to the hospital in Siracusa, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.
Italy has seen a consistent decrease in migrant and refugee arrivals since mid-2017, after signing a controversial deal with Libyan authorities and factions to curb departures of people heading to Europe.
Italy registered 4,864 arrivals between January 1 and February 19, over 72 percent of which from the Libyan coasts, statistics by the Italian Interior Ministry showed. The figure marked a 51.6 percent decrease against the same period of last year.