10 illegal immigrants drown off Sicily

The captain of a boat was arrested yesterday after 10 people died trying to swim ashore in rough seas off Sicily while trying to enter Italy illegally, port police said.

A port police official said local residents reported having seen a boat anchor some 50 metres off the Sicilian coast and then quickly disappear.

The port police said the 10 bodies were later found on a beach close to Ragusa, in the southeast of the island, after some 50 immigrants - believed to be North African - jumped from the boat into the water.

"Up to now the deaths of 10 immigrants have been confirmed. We found them spread across one kilometre of beach," a port official told Reuters.

"We are still looking for the other immigrants who made it safely to the shore," he said.

A boat was later stopped to the west of the beach where the bodies were found and the boat's captain, a North African was arrested, another port police official said.

Italian news agency ANSA said the boat was 11 metres long and registered in Tunisia.

Authorities said the death toll may rise and ANSA reported that coastguards had seen three more bodies in the water.

Bad weather and rough seas made the immigrants' swim to land more dangerous and was also hampering coastguards' recovery efforts.

The incident came just a week after 40 people died when a small fishing boat packed with an estimated 130 Liberian migrants sank just 200 metres off Sicily's coast during a heavy storm.

Thousands of illegal immigrants head to Italy every month, most travelling by boat from North Africa, Eastern Europe and Turkey. Earlier this year, a boat loaded with nearly 1,000 Kurdish refugees came ashore in the Sicilian port of Catania.

Accidents are common because many of the boats are barely seaworthy. In March, a boat carrying around 70 illegal immigrants capsized in heavy seas off Sicily, killing at least 50 people.

Earlier this month, Italy's conservative government enacted tough new legislation to try to stem the tide of immigrants, stepping up coastal patrols and giving police and the navy greater powers to monitor and board suspect boats.

But figures from the Interior Ministry show the flood of immigrants rose by about 30 per cent in the first six months over the same period last year.