Four boats carrying more than 350 migrants including Egyptians and
Syrians have landed in Italy, officials said Monday, the latest arrivals
due to the growing unrest in north Africa.
Ninety-nine people including 17 women and 11 children arrived on one
boat that was intercepted by coastguard vessels and taken to Catania in
Sicily. The migrants said they were from Syria and Egypt.
“Some of us are escaping from Egypt because there are people who lost
relatives after the fall of (deposed Islamist president Mohamed)
Morsi,” one migrant was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA.
He said their journey had lasted seven days.
“Unfortunately this is one of the many emergencies we have witnessed
in the past month,” local coastguard Giacomo Salerno told reporters in
Catania.
He said six of the migrants had been hospitalised due to heat strokes and low blood pressure.
“What is happening in Egypt is forcing these people to flee from
where they risk their lives and find refuge in the first port where they
can find more security than in their country,” he said.
Almost 800 people have died in days of clashes between security
forces and Morsi supporters throughout Egypt, where authorities last
week launched a bloody crackdown on demonstrators protesting his July 3
ouster by the army.
Another boat carrying around 150 people — including some 40 children
and 40 women — arrived near Noto, also in Sicily, without being
intercepted at sea.
Local police said they had found 126 of them, who all said they were
Syrian, and had identified three Egyptian crew members as the possible
traffickers.
Seventy-seven migrants — who said they were from Nigeria and Ghana —
arrived on another boat, a small dinghy, which was intercepted and taken
to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa earlier on Monday.
Italian police also said they had found 15 more migrants on the coast
in Sicily — part of a group of around 30 that landed overnight on a
fourth vessel. [AFP]
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