Coastguards escorted to land hundreds of migrants floating at sea off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, causing an emergency at its overwhelmed transit centre, the Ansa news agency reported.
Coastguards intercepted three vessels, carrying some 400 suspected illegal immigrants, to the Italian island south of Sicily early on Monday, following the arrival of hundreds of others on Sunday.
About 420 migrants were found in boats intercepted off the island over the weekend. The people, whose origin was not known, were taken to the island’s secure transit centre, which has a capacity of only 190.
The centre on Lampedusa — near the coasts of Tunisia and Libya — is frequently overwhelmed by mass arrivals. People were being transferred on Monday to centres in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy by plane and boat.
In 2005, 207 vessels were caught off Italy’s coasts carrying a total of about 22 000 migrants. Coastguards and customs officials last year also discovered 70 corpses. — AFP
