Italy ships 2,000 migrants from Lampedusa to mainland (UPDATES) (VIDEO)

Italy shipped more than 2,000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland Thursday from Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily that has been the landing point for thousands of illegal arrivals from North Africa.

Weathering bad press from an impending sex trial, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Lampedusa on Wednesday to oversee the evacuation of migrants using a Navy ship and a commercial ferry.

"Within 48 to 60 hours Lampedusa will be inhabited only by Lampedusa residents," said Berlusconi, after arriving on the tiny island south of Sicily on Wednesday.

Berlusconi is to undergo trial Apr. 6 on charges he paid an underage prostitute for sex. The longrunning scandal this week pulled in actor George Clooney and soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, who may be called as witnesses at the trial. 

Thousands of people have arrived on Lampedusa since January, many traveling across the Mediterranean from Tunisia and Libya to escape conflicts there, or in the hope of finding better financial opportunities in the European Union. 

Hundreds of Tunisians who landed at Lampedusa have already moved to reception centers on the Italian mainland and then attempted to enter France, according to the BBC. Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini reportedly said it was "well known that 80 percent of those arriving in Lampedusa speak French and maybe have relatives in French cities."

About 6,000 migrants — more than the total population of Lampedusa — are now living there in makeshift camps on the island with only three chemical lavatories, little access to water for washing, and growing tensions between locals and immigrants.

Aid organizations and charities have denounced the Italian 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 United Nations High Commission for Refugees, said according to Al Jazeera.

Italy has renewed an appeal for help from the European Union ahead of an expected influx of Libyan refugees as the crisis there worsens.

Meanwhile, Frattini complained about the handling of the crisis by the EU and France. "Europe has been absolutely inactive on this," he told SkyTG24 TV, adding that "very limited funds" had been forthcoming from Brussels.

An EU spokesman said Wednesday: "We have made around 18 million euros [$25 million] available to Italy in 2010-2011 for repatriations, on top of 25 million euros [$35 million] allocated to all member states for emergency measures."

Berlusconi, meantime, promised incentives to fishermen and tax breaks and a new urban plan to fed-up residents of the island, and even said he would put the island up for the Nobel Peace Prize.