1,000 immigrants land on Lampedusa
Fourteen boats carrying more than 1,000 migrants, most of them Tunisian, arrived yesterday on the Italian island of Lampedusa, coastguard officials said. Twenty-five migrants on one of the boats had to be rescued by the coastguard off Italian shores as...
Fourteen boats carrying more than 1,000 migrants, most of them Tunisian, arrived yesterday on the Italian island of Lampedusa, coastguard officials said.
Twenty-five migrants on one of the boats had to be rescued by the coastguard off Italian shores as the vessel risked sinking.
Among the arrivals was also a German woman with her nine-year-old daughter who had divorced her Tunisian husband, ANSA news agency reported.
The new arrivals joined around 100 migrants who had crossed the Mediterranean from Tunisia over the weekend despite poor weather.
The island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than to mainland Italy, has been swamped by thousands of arrivals from Tunisia in recent weeks and the 850-bed immigrant centre is severely overcrowded.
Other arrivals are expected in the coming hours as migrants take advantage of the calm weather after several days of stormy seas.
Italian government officials have said they expect a wave of Libyans to arrive.
Planes with 264 migrants on board left Lampedusa for other parts of Italy yesterday, and 64 others were put on a ferry for Porto Empedocle in Sicily.
The exodus from Tunisia follows the popular revolt that ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January and which sparked the uprising in Egypt that led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak last month.