An Italian frigate is towing a ship packed with around 1,000 Kurdish migrants to the island of Sicily, according to police officials.
"Our men who climbed aboard have spoken of seeing some 1,000 Kurds, including women and children," Mr Mario D'Alonzo, a police commander in the east Sicilian port city of Catania, said today.
Italian interior ministry officials said police had called a helicopter to take a pregnant woman from the ship to hospital and she had given birth to a baby girl, though it was not yet clear whether the baby was born on the ship or on land.
Navy officials said a French naval vessel had first sighted the ship in the eastern Mediterranean but had been unable to board it. The Italian frigate Perseohad taken the ship in tow when it entered Italian waters.
But France said in a statement issued late yesterday that sailors from a French frigate had in fact boarded the vessel in the southern Ionian sea between Italy and Greece.
The Italian Navy said the frigate and the ship, called the Monica, would reach Sicily this afternoon.
"It appears that the ship left from Lebanon, but the illegal immigrants come from Turkey," Mr D'Alonzo said.
Italy's long coastline makes it one of the European Union's most enticing arrival points for streams of migrants, most of them from Albania, Turkey, North Africa and Asia.
Thousands arrive every year on rusting ships that run aground or on high-powered speedboats which race across the Adriatic Sea from Albania.
Earlier this month, dozens of illegal immigrants drowned in rough seas as a small, old boat broke in half when it hit bad weather in international waters.