An Italian bus driver of Senegalese descent was arrested on Wednesday after hijacking his own vehicle and setting it on fire, allegedly threatening to kill more than 50 children on board whose hands he had bound.

The 47-year-old man said he was acting in revenge for the thousands of migrants, many of them African, who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years while trying to reach Europe from Libya.

“No one will survive,” he said, according to police.

“He shouted 'Stop the deaths at sea, I'll carry out a massacre',” said Marco Palmieri, a police spokesman.

The man, named as Ousseynou Sy, was driving 51 children from their middle school near the city of Cremona to a sporting event when he started making threats, brandishing a knife.

In an ordeal that lasted around 40 minutes, he started driving towards nearby Milan.

He rammed the bus into cars on a busy highway before it came to a stop at a roadblock set up by police.

He then doused it in petrol and set it on fire.

Police smashed the windows of the vehicle to allow the children to escape.

Television footage showed thick black smoke and flames billowing from the bus, which was reduced to a burnt-out hulk.