Italian police have detained about one-hundred-and-fifty illegal immigrants on beaches in south-eastern Italy.

The immigrants -- mostly Kurds from Iraq and Turkey and more than half of them children -- had crossed the sea from Albania in rubber dinghies.

They were taken to detention centres while the Italian authorities decide whether to deport them.

Another group of forty illegal immigrants, heading for Italy, was arrested on a Greek Aegean island Ikaria, where they were stranded by bad weather.

Correspondents say smuggling organisations are now bringing many thousands of illegal immigrants every year across the sea to Italy -- mainly from Albania and North Africa.