Updated | Rioting Tunisian migrants burn down reception centre

13:38 The Telegraph reports that devastating fire, which started when the migrants allegedly set fire to their bed mattresses, reduced much of the controversial centre to a smoking ruin.

The report adds that many of the 1,200 migrants held in the centre fled when three fires broke earlier on Tuesday, and that the fires also later destroyed three buildings in the complex.

Eearlier: Armed with batons and riot equipment, Italian police clashed with the Tunisian on Wednesday in a rapidly-breaking struggle that is highlighting the immigration plight on the Italian island just north of the Tunisian and Libyan coastline.

Many of the migrants leapt from a several metres-high wall, some apparently injuring themselves, in an effort to escape from the police, television news reports showed.

The clashes began after several migrants broke away from a march organized near the tiny island's port, and entered a restaurant which they threatened to blow up using gas cylinders found on the premises, the ANSA news agency reported.

Police intervened and where pelted with stones and other projectiles, ANSA said.

Late Tuesday the migrants set fire to a reception centre after apparently receiving news from Tunisia that a group of their compatriots had been deported.

January's uprising in Tunisia triggered an exodus of tens of thousands of Tunisians, most of whom crossing the Mediterranean and arriving on Lampedusa - geographically the closest European Union territory to Tunisia.

Since then many of the migrants have been moved to reception camps elsewhere in Italy or have been repatriated.