Italy is deporting hundreds of newly arrived illegal immigrants to Libya despite widespread condemnation of the practice.

In total, about 2000 people have been summarily repatriated in recent days. On Tuesday, two military airlifts scheduled to take 200 illegal immigrants to Libya were cancelled for technical reasons, but Italian officials said the expulsions would continue.

The policy, a reversal of Italy's traditionally more receptive attitude, reflects mounting difficulties faced by southern European nations whose shores serve as the entry point for illegal arrivals from North Africa and the Middle East.

Every year, thousands of impoverished people, usually in overcrowded, rickety boats, come ashore on Italy's tiny Lampedusa island or Sicily. Scores more have died in the effort. On Sunday, a fishing boat that set sail from Tunisia sank after reportedly splitting in two under the weight of its passengers. Sixty-four people drowned or were missing.

At the weekend, about 2600 migrants landed at Lampedusa - which is geographically closer to Tunisia than Europe - and were being detained at a centre that has a capacity of 200.

Advertisement Acting on accords reached this year by the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, Italy declared the influx an emergency and began sending the new arrivals back to Libya, where most were believed to have begun their sea voyages. Many were handcuffed when they boarded Italian C-130s.

Human-rights and relief agencies said Italy had broken international law because officials failed to assess whether any of the people, whose nationalities were not always clear, had legitimate asylum claims.

"We [risk] deporting men and women who are fleeing massacres and persecution," Stefano Savi, head of the Italian branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres, told reporters. "This is an obvious violation of international law."

The Community of St Egidio, an influential humanitarian organisation with ties to the Vatican, said lives were being endangered because no effort was being made to determine what would happen to the immigrants after they arrived in Libya.

The group also noted that the Government's own statistics showed the number of arrivals in southern Italy had been well below that of recent years.

Italian officials said they were adhering to international conventions and providing emergency care to the immigrants before repatriating them.

The Deputy Interior Minister, Alfredo Mantovano, said the expulsions would be stepped up.

"It discourages the immigrants from leaving for Italy," he told the newspaper La Stampa. "If they know they will be sent back, perhaps they won't set out."

Officials have told humanitarian organisations that anyone from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia is being permitted to remain because of conflicts in those nations, but aid organisations said they doubted an accurate determination of nationality could be made with such a short turnaround time. In addition, under international rules, asylum is not to be determined by nationality but by individual circumstances.