Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi made an unusual personal attack on European Council President Donald Tusk late yesterday accusing him of slighting the Italian people in remarks about refugees.

Leaving a Brussels summit that Tusk had chaired, Renzi was asked by reporters about comments last week in which the former Polish prime minister bracketed Italy with Hungary as member states which had broken EU rules on handling migrants.

"What President Tusk said showed little respect for the efforts of the Italian people," Renzi said, adding that Italy, which has taken in large numbers for many years, had given "lessons in civilisation and generosity" to other EU countries.

Italian diplomats said Tusk's criticism was particularly wounding in associating Italy with Hungary, whose right-wing government has built razor-wire fences to keep migrants out.

Dr Muscat arrives for the summit yesterday.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat addressed the summit and called for a system that rewards African countries which take migrants back who are ineligible for asylum and penalises those which do not. 

WREATH ON MIGRANTS' BOAT

Meanwhile, the Italian navy yesterday released video of a wreath being lowered onto the wreckage of a migrant vessel which sank off the coast of Libya in April.

The navy said it placed the wreath following the completion of inspection and assessment work on the boat.

It said 118 bodies had been removed from the sunken vessel, which lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The difficult task of pulling out the corpses began in June.

Following the laying of the wreath with the help of a robotic arm, the wreckage was saluted with three flashes of light, the navy said in a statement.

The fishing boat, carrying up to 800 migrants, sank in April, making it the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean for decades and a symbol of Europe's long-running migrant crisis. Some of the dead were buried in Malta.

The 20-metre (66-foot) vessel capsized as it approached a merchant ship that had come to its assistance. The incident prompted the European Council to tackle the problem head on.